Revolutionary Rants

It is muggy here today. After several days of glorious sunshine the promised clouds rolled in last evening and brought with them the pre-rain fug that is the worst bit of summer (bar sunburn, which I hope to avoid this year with my 30+ spray and 25+ face stuff - finger’s crossed for my poor gothic/Celtic skin).

It rained all night, but it hasn’t cleared the mugginess, plus it is wet enough for Ferris to refuse to go outside for his morning ablutions. Still, we have now been for a long walk and sorted that side of things. He is teething presently and sitting at my feet chewing hard at a raw-hide “cigar” in between inspecting his paws for rain damage…

We have both taken the return to work/volunteering/getting up at 7:00am in our stride and also enjoyed a BBQ with my brother and family on Tuesday. Add to that an exciting Apprentice (how could you not know what Kosher is? Even worse mistake for a ‘good Jewish boy’ to make, though, surely?) and some downright dreadful Heroes and you have our brief week. Oh, plus a lot of American Dad, which has just come on BBC3 - hoorah!

A quiet weekend is in the offing: I work tomorrow, and I want to build our new gate and do some weeding, too.

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We left Devon at around lunch time on Wednesday and had a hassle free and easy train journey to London. We got the tube to King’s Cross from Paddington and checked in to our hotel, the Meridiana, which was ok for a stop over but not great generally. The breakfast left quite a lot to be desired!

We went straight out to meet Charles, at the National Gallery cafe and then we walked around arguing about what to do in the rain. We ended up having a beer at the Oxo tower before dinner at the National Theatre, which was very pleasant indeed. I had a lovely polenta dish and a highly extravagant choccy pud.

The next day we caught the Eurostar to Gard du Nord. Our trip was quick and smooth and we were not involved in the fire that snared up the Chunnel later on in the day.

We got our Visites from St. Pancras, so we got straight on the RER to Luxembourg and checked in to the Hotel des Mines (which is pleasant enough apart from being on a RER station rather than Metro, which is really quite annoying!)

We headed straight out after freshening up and took our 2007 Michelin Guide to find somewhere for dinner. We walked all around the St Michel area, through St Germaine, saw Notre Dame and walked on the Ile St Michel and Ile de la Cite.

We stopped for a vin rose/beer at the Place de la Sorbonne and saw the photos of Mai 1968 before heading back to our chosen restaurant, Le Mediterrannee. This was a lovely place. We had the set menu. We both started with soupe du poisson, which was quite delicious, as always! I followed this with swordfish and courgette tagliatelle, whilst Chicken had duckling with petits pois and sugarsnap peas. Then we finished with creme brulee and pistache ice cream (those of you who know us will know which was whose pudding!). The meal, wine and ambiance were all wonderful.

After a good nights sleep we headed out for breakfast, as was not included in our hotel. We decided to be boring that day and went to Brioche Doree, a chain we sometimes frequent in Nice. Once caffeined-up we headed down to Pont d’Alma to go to the Egouts (Sewers) museum - however our DK Guide didn’t tell us it was shut on Fridays…

We went up to the Champs Elysees for my loved one to visit Fnac and had lunch at Leon de Bruxelles (moules marinieres et frites plus gauffres au chocolat). After a rest at the hotel we went to Montpernasse to get baguette, cheese and patisseries. Then we walked around the Jardins du Luxembourg (there is an excellent and very moving display of photos on the fence of the gardens currently running - well worth a look should you be in Paris) before returning here to the hotel for our meal and a few glasses of wine/beer, a DVD and sleep!

We had another leisurely start on Saturday, and awoke to find the sun was out, contrary to weather forecasts. It was a stunning day, indeed!

We set out on the RER to St-Michel du Notre Dame and went to our favourite cafe from our honeymoon trip, across from our previous hotel on Rue Lagrange. The pain aux raisins are as big as cart wheels, and as this is my favourite breakfast bite whilst in France, it is a good place for us! Plus the coffee (another must) and pain au chocolat are pretty blooming good too!

Then we hopped back on the RER and back to Pont d’Alma for the Musee des Egouts. We only had a short queue of less than five minutes before heading down the stairs. The staff were very helpful, allowing me to go through to the toilet and chatting away happily with Mr C about why on earth we’d pay to go in a sewer!

The Musee itself was very interesting, telling us a great deal of historical fact and allowing us to get a good feel for the work of the sewer workers. Plus, all importantly, it did not smell too badly at all!!! You got the odd whiff of something very bad, but not all the time, despite walking around on open grids which allowed you to see the running sewer below you.

After than we went to Les Halles shopping centre and failed to find new shoes for my loved one, before heading back for a quick baguette and remoulade lunch. We had another stroll at the Jardins, seeing the Medici fountain and - it seemed - all of Paris as the park was packed!

Then we returned to the hotel to freshen up for Maceo.

We arrived early but were seated straight away. I went for the Menu Vert and Chicks the Menu Decouverte. He started with smoked salmon, poached egg and asparagus soup, myself with poached egg, asparagus tips and mushrooms. Both good. The main was excellent. I had pasta risotto of broad beans and artichoke and Booty had wild duck with turnip and fruit. Then to pudding I had a raisin macaroon, apple and chocolate tower, of which the chocolate was AMAZING! Sminks had a fraise sorbet and fresh fraise with cream which was quite delicious and fresh.

All in all, Maceo’s food was still breathe taking, but the service, on this very busy night, was not so great. Last time we had jokes, chats and all our food explained in great detail in BOTH French and English. That made it feel special, plus it felt like “our” place then, with only us and six other diners in their all evening. After recommending it to everyone I now realise that means everyone goes!!!!!!!!! Oh well, still great.

After our dinner at Maceo, we awoke at around 9:00am and after showers headed back to our favourite breakfast place near Notre Dame.

We had decided against Versailles as the Petite Trianon is closed for restoration and we particularly wanted to see that. Plus, we plan a full on ‘museum and culture’ trip next year, with my Mum and Alex. That way my Mum and I can get museum passes and do all the related things of interest whilst Chicken and ‘Weeks shop ’til they drop!

We headed up to Montmatre. It was a stunning, sunny day and really quite hot, so the crowds were out in force! We arrived at Pigalle and walked through the seedier bit of Montmatre. We saw the adult video shop used in ‘Amelie’ as the work place of Nino, which was another tick on our ’seeing places in the film’ list!!! We then went to see the Musee de l’Erotisme.

This was quite a disappointment as we had expected a sort of history of the area and much more Lautrec style stuff, of which there was really very little. Three floors were given over to very violent modern Japanese artists and we felt quite miffed we’d had to pay to see stuff that was basically just on sale and not very good!

We next walked all the way up to Sacre Coeur - and when I say walked I do mean it! The line for the funicular railway was enormous, and we didn’t fancy standing around being targets for the bracelet guys, so we took the stairs. I was quite proud when we got to the top! Plus we got very little hassle with the bracelet guys this year, compared to last when they hurt my wrist and chased us!

We then went on a wild goose chase to find this vegetarian restaurant: we found it, but it was closed on Sundays…

So off went again, by now pretty hungry and with the time nearing 14:00. We gave up on Montmartre as it was so busy and got back on the Metro to Sorbonne, where we had pleasant altho’ not great pizzas on the Place de la Sorbonne. Not a touch on our favourite place in Nice, I can tell you! We then went - with the rest of Paris - to get ice cream from Berthillon on Ile St Louis. We queued at the window and it only took around 10 mins to get our ice cream, which was fab. We then got baguette, cheese and some wine for that evening and decamped back to the Hotel des Mines.

We were up early yesterday, our first wedding anniversary, and grabbed a quick espresso at Montpernasse, where we went to our old stamping ground, the huge Monoprix. We got all the essentials for home - a couple of boxes of wine, Grand Marnier, garlic bulbs, tapanade and pate for my loved one. We also got stuff for lunch on the Eurostar.

Then, we got our bags and left for Gard du Nord. With no trouble on the Eurostar and some with the English trains (surprise, surprise!) we got home to North Devon last evening happy and tired.

One of the best things about a holiday is being both sad to go and very happy to be home. We missed our Ferris very much whilst we were away, and we were so glad to collect him from my parents house! And, lest we forget, however good our holidays in Paris are we also live in one of the most beautiful parts of this world ourselves! Well, so we think anyway…

And, it is not even raining today - the weather is just as sunny and lovely as in Paris, actually - so wonders will never cease!!!!!!!!!

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Two days to go. Rather over excited, as per usual. Well, excited doesn’t really cover it. My usual travel panic has set in, fears of forgetting things like passports or tickets or what not. My fear is about control, apparently. By fearing I control my feelings over the situation. I’d rather go without the control and be without the fear, too, but I am not built that why I suppose.

We are now dithering about Versailles and whether we’ll go to look at the gardens alone or the Palace, or whether we’ll see the Palace next time with museum passes (in mine and Mum’s cases). More fear. Kill me now…

We have a 90 min canal walk to do, Montmartre to visit, possibly the sewers museum and plenty of good food to eat, of course. Maceo on Saturday night, our favourite restaurant.

Just wish we could take Ferris! He’ll be with Mum and Dad, though, so safe and sound and happy.

The weekend was nice. Went to get a ‘freecycle’ modem in Braunton on Saturday and then took Buelley to Braunton Burrows, which was lovely. It is where the army trains and we found lots of spent bullets for my nephew and climbed up a steep bank of sands and sat on the dunes looking out over Saunton drinking a shared tin of Dr Pepper zero. Smashing. Then Dr Who (very boring, in my view) and Wexford before sleep.

Yesterday we had haircuts, discussed the family holiday to Brittany and walked the dog round the village. And I packed, too. Yesterday evening I saw Miss Austen Regrets which was very slow and somewhat pointless, couldn’t even be saved by the usually great Olivia Williams.

Neither of us could sleep until 2:00am. Excitement? Fear? Who knows…

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So, the packing has begun, slowly but in earnest. The excitement grows, daily. In one weeks time I expect to be, at around this time, sitting in departures (if it is called that with a train?) awaiting our Eurostar to Gard du Nord. We are wondering how the new St Pancras side of things will go, as we always liked the old Waterloo, with its Costa Coffee attached. Hopefully there will be caffinious beverages available in the new ‘terminal’, too.

Mr C returned from London yesterday. He went up on Tuesday and spent the night before doing stuff with servers somewhere in Canary Wharf. It all went well and he and his colleague were pleased. Happily I had forgotten it was St George’s Day yesterday (I have been on the tube twice during old style IRA type bomb scares and one involved a lot of running up the platform at Liverpool Street on St George’s Day in around 1995 or ‘96) so I didn’t spend the day worrying about Chicken being exploded or anything.

It has been on and off rain and sun shine the last couple of days. Tuesday was lovely, and Dad and I planted two rows of gladioli in the evening after work. Ferris did some digging of his own, finding an ants nest before moving on to a little light weeding and chewing of row markers. Yesterday was nice but with a cool wind, still I have been able to crack out my chunky sandals for the first time in ‘08 so that is good. Now they shall be packed, also.

I am now permanent at work, which is good.

The London elections loom, on the day we’ll be leaving the capital to go to France, of course. Luckily we have a telly in the hotel this time (we are saving the Esmeralda for ’special occasions’ and we wanted wi-fi this time as well as I spent quite a lot of our honeymoon wondering if Blair had gone, so much so that we ended up on the Champs Elysée on a bench scouring the BBC site…)

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Poor old John Prescott. I never thought I would feel sorry for the man Chumbawumba dumped a bucket of water over, the man who seems the definition of a champagne Socialist, but I do.  He has, bravely in my view, admitted that he has had bulimia during his time as deputy-PM. Sometimes people baulk at the kind of fatty diatribes we seen flung at female stars, but where ever Prezza was there was usually some kind of comment about his size…

The government is having even more fun with the malarkey over the 10p tax. Cameron was on the telly this morning complaining and refusing to say what HE would do if he was in power. I wait with breath that is bated to see if the hideous thick Labrador of a man wins in London. Is there a sea-change coming? Or will it merely be a one Tory win because he presents Have I Got News For You quite well?

The weekend has gone quickly, we are now getting a bit more obsessed by our impending holiday. The car has failed it’s MOT - breaks are dodgy and the exhaust, which we await to see what is wrong with today. We are hoping it will be ok as we will all be sad to lose Wagon R.

We went to my niece’s 7th birthday party on Saturday night and took the kids to Croyde yesterday but otherwise general laziness ensued.

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After another blinked and you’ve missed it weekend we’re back into the week. I shouldn’t complain too much, I know, because I have today off (I’ll be working the three middle days of the week this week, as well as volunteering on Wednesday morning - Ferris will go to his Nanny’s house, of course).

I’ve spent it, thus far, taking Ferris, once again, over Dennington hill and back over to Swimbridge, in the reverse of the way we went a week or two ago; looking at my blogroll and answering queries on the Paris forum on TripAdvisor; writing a rant (see below); putting a further two rows of red onions in to my allotment; and watching a programme about Ottis Toole. It is amazing, really, when one has a job how quickly days off pass - I shall shortly be preparing snap for when my handsome hen gets in…

I am thinking daily now about our impending holiday to Paris, which is in just over two weeks. I am really looking forward to it, apart from not being able to take the little pup with us, but he will be looked after by the maternal grandparents, as per. We haven’t got any major sight seeing plans this time out, except a trip out to Versailles, but we are just looking forward to being in the city of light again.

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Here we go again. Women boiled down to the lowest common denominator - fashion, clothes, the way they look.

Last time I looked The Apprentice was - albeit vaguely - business related, however, today our favourite right-wing rag has published an interesting article pointing out how wrong I was. It is about DRESSING RIGHT! Of course, silly old me. “While the male contestants in the programme look smart, co-ordinated and classy (bar the odd over-wide lapel and loud shirt), the women all look like…well, like what they are, which is unimaginative, hopelessly deluded and over-ambitious sales reps” says the obviously in-the-know Liz Jones. No mention of whether the men are good at business, because, we can assume, they are good at dressing. Or because they are men? In which case they must be good at business.

This is the thing with capitalism, it undermines. It doesn’t necessarily say ‘you’re crap at business go home and breast-feed a baby’ it simply makes a business out of being feminine. Men won’t take you seriously if you’re too slutty, too prim, too lesbiany, too under-styled, too fat or too powerful. Could the very fact that business men sort of have to wear suits and shirts and ties, according to “normal” practice by helping out the male contestants wardrobe choice? Not too much to go wrong there, is there? Heaven forbid any of them should turn up to work in jewellery that is clunky!

Luckily Ms Jones has a solution too all the female Apprentice-wannabes plights - the good feminine choice of clothes we all need to be successful women in the world of work.

She goes through a list of rather expensive items - £200 label jackets, £1,200 label dresses.  And expects us to have plenty of staples, such as white shirts. £25 f**king quid on a WHITE SHIRT? And she thinks that’s cheap. The most expensive item of clothing I’ve ever brought was £90, and that was my wedding dress. OK, so I am not a clothes horsey type of person, we knew that; I try to wear clothes that look OK or that - radically - I like. That includes work, because, really, when I am at work I am using my mind - which works just fine with out a floaty shirt-dress from Prada, thanks very much. Ms Jones asserts that she wouldn’t hire a woman that wore to much make-up etc, because she might spend too much time on her lunch hour in the beauty salon - excuse me but it is HER LUNCH HOUR, surely? Nor, she claims, would she hire an unkempt woman because she would assume her work would “also be sloppy” - of course, that equates perfectly. Funny how I managed at once to be both badly dressed AND get a First Class degree, isn’t it? Fluke, probably, a day-off from the sloppiness my dress suggests.

So, there you go. Women are to be looked at, men just get on with it. I am a woman, by biological chance and I liek my clothes for what they are, things to keep my warm and look a bit nice. I like my job better.

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You’ve just got to love John Snow, haven’t you?

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Sorry I haven’t been about much. What with dog walking, onion planting, spending time with my visiting bro and off school niece and nephew, work and volunteering things have been quite rushed this week. I didn’t even check my e-mail yesterday, which is highly unusual…

I have only had time to plant one more row of red onions, as it has decided to rain on me today (April showers, apparently, say the Beeb) and yesterday I was in Bideford for most of the morning and then went to collect Ferris from Mum’s and ended up staying most of the afternoon.

I shall not mention the penalty that never was nor the horrid Scouser’s false victory.

Last night I sat down excitedly to watch The Apprentice. I love the sheer unbridled horridness of all the evil little capitalist involved. “Before we start can we get a hundred percent commitment here, guys, because I really want to win this”. Yes s’Alan, no s’Alan, Three bags full s’Alan. It is brilliant, nasty television; usually. However, the new series isn’t floating my boat quite as much as the last, the contestants are all just as hatable - calling one another all the names under the sun to the cameras and then saying how good a team leader they were when it comes to the board room to escape being called back in, thinking it is ok to charge £9.95 for a Value pizza with a few bits of mushroom on the top - but somehow something is missing. Is it the false grin of Katie Hopkins, shagging in a field in a desperate attempt to get publicity? Maybe, there are not many characters this time out. Maybe it is because they aren’t doing as many wonderfully foolish things - the best part of the series so far was when the male team priced fresh lobster at £4.99 a go - there have been no trips to sell the French Makro cheese, no sexually suggestive trampoline adverts… But there is time and I shall press on with it…

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Maybe it is me, but the weekends seem to be flying passed these last couple. Mr C says the same, so it must be a household thing if it is only us. Friday afternoons are usually busy, Saturday shoots by and then it is Sunday, and with a lie-in it is gone! Not that we even lie-in much anymore, not like in our student days, when 9:00am (when we got up this Sunday) would have been early. I do prefer the system we’ve had since Chicken started at work in 2006, of getting up at 7:00am, because I feel like I have more of a day, but hey…

Last Friday was no exception to the busy thing. I got the bus to St. John’s where I went in the garden centre and brought seed potatoes, onions (red and white), spinach, lettuce and beetroot. I was then met by the loved one and we went for a dental check-up. We hadn’t been since 2003, but our new dentist - Alex - nearly wept at the sight of our ‘exceptional’ teeth and told Mr C is was wonderful to ’see two such remarkable sets in a row’. Nice. Then we had a quick evil capitalist food shop and went home.

On Saturday we were woken at 7:30am by Ferris, who has a intermittent thing with the stairs at the moment. I had to work for a couple of hours, so Chicken and Bueller came in with me. Mr C went off in to town. After work, we drove out to Instow, which was surprisingly quiet for the beginning of half term; maybe due to the biting wind.

When we got home Dad came and helped me start off the allotment. We tilled the soil for the potatoes and planted three rows, and did the first row of onions (I shall shortly head down to do row number two). It is funny how you change, I used to wonder at gardening; I could see why people liked it, but it ‘wasn’t for me’. Then, on Saturday I headed down to the allotment in a right old mood and came back an hour or two later relaxed and happy. It was great. I just hope something will grow! Well, even if nothing does, I suppose it is the gardening that is the point anyway. We’ve split the patch in to quarters and my Nan is bringing on some beans for me and we will also plant some rhubarb in September. My brother has also put in some raspberry bushes.

The rest of Saturday was taken up by eating the meal Chicken prepared and watching telly (including the disappointing Dr Who - David Tennant may be very gorgeous but he is starting to annoy me as the Doctor, I must admit… Plus it is so kiddie geared now. It used to be for everyone, now it plainly isn’t…)

On Sunday we had our lie-in, thereby missing the only bit of snow that laid. It is shower with snow in the afternoon, but it was gritty, hail-like snow, not thick enough to lay. Yesterday we didn’t do much, walked the dog, tidied the spare room and sitting room and cooked a roast. In the evening we watched the Tim Burton version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which we actually enjoyed more second time out.

Charlton Heston died over the weekend. I await to see if anyone will now prise his gun from his “cold dead hands”…

Now it is Monday again, beginning of another week. It is freezing, but sunny presently and before work I am going to take the dog and do some gardening…

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