The SnippEthel

Because this blog is both badly written and uninteresting, I have decided to kill The Snip and go back to my old self, in french on http://ethelici.blogspirit.com, see you there!

It's that time of the year again. With regret, you think of the past weeks when you were just lying on the sand, drinking fresh rosé and contemplating semi-naked people. Cricket is over, flying over canyons too. Soon, it will be too dark to play tennis in the evening. Everything seems so far away... even your tan is slowly fading. You have to do your own washing up now. Your alarm clock is on. You are back to work and you feel tired. You already look forward to your next holiday, a few days at Christmas, months from now. Your colleagues look just as depressed as you are, that's the only thing that comforts you: everyone's back to work. Everyone? Nooooo... I'm off for a week on the beach! So long my friends!

Going through my list of keywords to translate, I have discovered a brand new word I had never encountered during my stay in Britain.
This word is CONGENIAL. The Free Dictionary (very useful reference website) gives this definition (amongst others) : sympathethic, friendly and sociable.
What the Free Dictionary doesn't mention, and probably doesn't know is what 'congenial' litterally means in french. A 'con génial' means a great idiot or a fantastic damn foul, if you prefer.
These funny meaning differences can cause great misunderstandings. I would probably have been very upset if anyone had told me I was congenial (although it would have been unlikely, I've never been told I was sociable in my entire life).
I think I have possibly put the finger on the reasons why Britain and France have never managed to really get along and why so many Britons and French assume the people on the other side of the Channel are weird, mean and stupid. Although this is sometimes true... take Bernie for example, whose real name, by the way, is Bez... which, funny enough, litterally means 'fuck' in french... isn't it brilliant ? Languages sometimes seem to fit to the perfection.

Last Tuesday was a bank holiday in France.
August 15 is off for all the French to celebrate Mary's assumption to heaven, although I very much doubt many people bear a thought for poor Mary, that is, of course, if they even know this day is dedicated to her.
This is also usually a "dead week" in France with most people on holiday and many companies and factories closed.
August 15 was a family day for me. My brothers and I came back home for a family lunch followed by a walk in the mountains (and a wild blueberry feast!).
This kind of reunion is usually a good occasion to grab some of the rare anecdotes my parents like to keep secret from their past. With the help of champagne and wine, my mother became more and more talkative as the meal progressed, to our greatest pleasure.
My dad grew up five minutes from where my parents live now, surrounded by his five sisters and four brothers while my mum was growing up in another farm, forty minutes away, surrounded by her seven brothers and four sisters (that's when the authorities realize how important it was to develop contraception).
While dating, we learnt my mum sent a bunch of herbs (??) to my dad. To our total bewilderment, my parents came to explain that in return, my dad, with the help of his own father, sent in reply a box with rabbit's poo balls and a dead rabbit's head!!
They couldn't quite remember the hows and whys of the event, but were both confident it all made sense at the time.
At this point, we came to realize my parents were serious weirdoes, but we kind of knew that already, and that partly explains why my brothers and I are such weirdoes too, which is reassuring in some way, because we now know we can have fun and succeed in our lives with that handicap, just like my parents did.

Being alone in the office for the whole month, I decided to be a good girl and come and work on Friday afternoon for a change (did I ever mention I never work on Friday afternoons..?).

Arriving at 2pm, I launched Excel for a bit of keyword translation (I'm supposed to translate more than 33,000 keywords from English to French... quite an easy thing you might think but when you come accross Anolis equestris or Alopecia, it gets a bit depressing... any help welcome!). At 2.10pm, the phone rang... amazing! Who can be working today in France, I wondered. I answered : 'Igolus, bonjour'... and all just made sense, it was a phone call from Alex, my Swiss mentor who fancied a little chat on that cloudy and quiet Friday afternoon. After talking about the history of Rock and watching simultaneously YouTube videos, I put the phone down and realized it was 4pm... and now I must go, because I want to catch a film at 4.30... not a very productive afternoon, I guess, a good thing I wasn't paid for it!
Have a good weekend everyone...

I spent Friday afternoon on the train to join Leo in Western Loire for the weekend. This is a lovely area of France full of history and monuments. Leo drove me around and I saw:
A royal abbey (huge!)

A pig on an old tapestry

Weird mushrooms including this one

Posh people having a picnic with real tables, real cutlery, real glasses and even candlesticks (although it was very sunny...!)

A man in white (probably looking for his lady - last seen in London near Shaftesbury Avenue) who would later drag Don Giovanni (left) to hell...

A trendy teddy bear

Merry the hobbit

Beautiful old houses like this one

And troglodytic houses, carved in the rock

A huge castle built in the 11th and 12th century

... and a very happy naked girl

I have received my Velo'v card today!

But what is Velo'v, you might say... Velo'v is a brilliant and simple concept.
There are about 3000 bikes provided by the city hall of Lyon. All those bikes are situated in 200 'stations' around Lyon and in the suburbs. You can take a bike where you live, for example, ride to your workplace and park it to the closest velo'v station, where somebody else will use it to go somewhere else.

If you live in Lyon and wish to use the bikes on a regular basis, you can order a long term card (like the one I have received). It cost £7 (10€) for a whole year. After that, you can use the bike as much as you want, considering the first half hour is totally free and after that it is about 0,50€ per hour.
If you are just passing by, you can get a short term card which costs 1€. Once again, the first half hour is free and then it's about 1€ per hour.
It is really convenient for people who have no opportunity to store their bikes at home or at work, and you don't need to worry that someone is going to steal your beloved bicycle.
The bikes are really handy with a basket at the front, three levels of speed (not sure how to explain this, but you get the idea... don't you..?) the required lights and the thing to tie your bike to something to avoid theft (obvious lack of vocabulary here...).
Everyone loves Velo'v in Lyon, they constantly add more stations and more bicycles and the concept has already reached other French towns. More and more people choose to use bikes instead of cars in town which makes the city much more agreable and clean.
It has also brought back an old habit of our ancestors : the romantic cycling... All around Lyon, you come accross young men riding Velo'v with their girls facing them, sitting on the handlebar... I'll try and take a picture sometime soon. Romance is back in the heart of our cities, so bucolic!

My friend Xiao called yesterday to say she was going back home to China for a month, on holiday.
I met Xiao five years ago in Paris, August 2001. I was moving from a hostel to another one and ended up in her bedroom. There were three beds in that crappy room. The third girl was an unemployed,confused and a bit slow eighteen-year-old who let junk food rotten on her desk and had the habit of sleeping in her clothes (we learnt later she got herself pregnant and went back to stay with her mother...), the good thing was, she was hardly ever there. Xiao and I were a bit defiant at first. Xiao had been in France for just a year and had a terrible Chinese accent, I could barely understand what she was telling me... Day after day, we tamed each other and started talking about all kind of stuff, talking for hours.
Then there was 9/11 and our conversations suddenly changed from books and exhibitions to imperialism and communism... It was really great to get things into perspective from a Chinese point of view. Who cared to wonder what the Chinese thought of 9/11 ?
Xiao and I became inseparable, exploring Paris with people turning their interrogative eyes on her strange outfits. For Xiao is an artist. She is a painter. She is a poet. She is a film maker. She is a designer. She is a photographer. and so much more. Whatever you give Xiao, a word, a pen, a toy, even a condom, she will turn it into art, into something meaningful.
Xiao has been in France for six years now and she has managed to get into one of the most wanted design schools in Europe, which means she will remain in France for at least four more years, to my greatest pleasure.
I preciously keep all the things I have ever received from her... The letters she sent throughout the years, the drawings she made on pieces of paper, a photoshoot I made of her for fun, one day we were bored and this gorgeous glass she engraved for one of my birthdays...

I know sometime soon, Xiao will be big. I have known it from the start. And I know all those things will be invaluable... not that I would sell any of them, of course, for noone could cherish all those memories as much as I can.
I look forward to seeing her again.

Back from the circles of gastro-enteritistic hell, I have discovered this great website :
http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~morph/Transformer/
where you can picture yourself as a man (if you're a woman), a chimp, a manga, a baby, an African/Asian/Caucasian, or as painted by Modigliani or Botticelli, etc.
Here is how I might look like when I get old... scary!