The SnippEthel

I spent the day in Geneva with my boss Amanda.
Amanda picked me up this morning and drove us to Geneva to see a business partner and a potential client. During the five hours we spent in the car, Amanda asked me stuff about my boyfriend, my flat, my step family. She told me where I could buy nice jewelry and which doctor I should go to for each and every problem. She bought me a magnum ice cream and said I could take a nap in the car on our way back.
Oh god! I think I've just got myself a second mother...

Yesterday I wondered: 'what can you do on this lonely night to cheer up?' Then I remembered we are supposed to eat five/six fruits a day to stay healthy.... As I ransacked the local market at the weekend for apricots, peaches and blackberries, I decided to hold a fruit feast for myself. It looked like this:

I don't think you are supposed to put chocolate on top (especially that much) but it tastes quite nice, I can assure you! It reminded me of my last week in Britain when Tim, Mike, Shaz, Princess Lizzy (wish it'd been Tess instead) and I went to Madame Chocolat to have a chocolate fondue. Madame Chocolat is a tiny chocolate shop in South East London where we had to eat our fondue with the plates on our knees, hoping no clients would come in (that would have proved very difficult anyway, since we were kind of blocking the entrance). It does seem years ago now, but the good news is, if Tim, Mike, Shaz & Tess do come over to Lyon some day, I know I'll be able to provide a great fondue for everyone!

Gigi & Alf came over at the weekend. I hadn't seen them for more than two years but strangely, from the start, it just felt like we had never been apart.


We had a great time eating ice creams, but the main problem was : the heat... it makes you want to lie eternally in the shade, waiting for an hypothetic wind that will never come.

We went to Lyon's main park: the Golden Head Park (le parc de la Tête d'Or) where you can rent pedal boats and electric boats to go on the lake... that's what we did...

Inexorably, it all ended in a water battle, but I reckon it would have been much funnier if I HAD HAD A BOTTLE TOO!!!
the time we arrived to the car, everyone was dry again.
I let Alf play a bit with Photo Booth:

but whatever Gigi does, she looks pretty:

You wouldn't know we used to call her 'the hyena', would you?!!

After my glasses broke, I was in some sort of big problem, as you can imagine. I tried to call an eye doctor but I couldn't get an appointment until September. Leo, before leaving for the Loire Valley to perform Haendel, was giving me the odd look, probably wondering what I would break next (a bowl? already did. the cafetiere? already did. my little toe? already did... probably a plate then!)
This afternoon, I had to take a decision since I only had about 10 pairs of one-day contact lenses left. I find an optician and enter the shop (aaaahhh air conditioning... this is SO GOOD, I CAN'T STAND THE HEAT ANYMORE, can I stay here forever, pppllleeeaaassseee). I expose my problem to a young lady who is very polite :
- I broke my glasses
- can you fix them even though I didn't buy them here ?
- if so, how much is it going to cost me ?
The lady takes my little babies to the back of the shop and leaves me on my own, for five minutes, just next to a huge bowl of little sweets... mmmh, sweets!
She comes back and says that if my glasses are made of titanium, they will prove unable to fix them but if they aren't, then it will cost 15€. I say ok and she asks me to come back in an hour. During this time, since the flat is just unbearably hot at this time of day, I go from air conditioned shops to air conditioned shops, pretending to browse through their items although my only goal is to find the coolest area of the shop.
An hour later, I come back to the shop (which has, by the way, the best air conditioning of the whole commercial street, and you can trust me, I almost went in all of them). Another girl who is also extremely nice explains to me that my glasses are made of a weird material. They managed to fix them, but it doesn't look too nice...
I am terrified to see what they did to my beloved binoculars. She shows them to me...

...not much of a difference if you want my opinion... that's when the girl says : 'since they look awful, we won't charge you for them.' YYYOOOUUUHHOOOUU!
After saying many thanks, I come out of the shop very happy with myself and go straight to the Virgin Megastore to spend my 15€ on the Madrugada live album at Tralfamadore that I'm listening to right now.

The thing is, now I feel quite guilty about those sweets I took... you know....

My boyfriend says I'm a bully to my glasses.

They didn't fall on the floor. Noone walked on them. But they were old, could it be at all possible that they just committed suicide while I was cleaning them ???!

The media have been announcing it for months, making it into the television event of the summer: there would be a Black newsreader on TF1 (pretty much the equivalent of ITV1). Harry Roselmack (that's his name) was already presenting news, on Canal+ (pretty much the equivalent of Channel4) and there has been Rachid Arab, from Northern African origin on France2 (pretty much the equivalent of BBC1 or BBC2) for years. But somehow, this is getting everyone's attention.
Harry started presenting the 8pm news two days ago, but we are not talking about any news program here... The 8 o'clock news on TF1 is an institution. Every single day, about 10 million people watch it. TEN MILLION. This program has been presented by the same journalist for 19 years (that's more than 4500 programs): Patrick Poivre D'Arvor, nicknamed PPDA. The news are called 'the big mass of 8pm' because people seem to watch it as they used to go to church, listening to the sermons, getting an education. But Patrick needs holidays sometimes... and Harry got the job. Many newspapers and websites are going on and on about how late we are compared to Britain or the USA to broadcast presenters of diverse origins. That's true. Most people on French screens as white. That's a shame.
But if you ask me, I'd say maybe, maybe it was worth the wait... for Harry is just the perfect guy: smart, cool, with a deep voice and soooo charming. I swear, I've never seen anyone like him on telly. Can you spot the difference?










and the good news is, the whole population is under his spell! Let's just hope PPDA never comes back!

Yesterday, as I was coming back to the office after lunch, I was stunned to discover Amanda lying on her office's floor. I was about to panic when I noticed a little piece of clothing comfortably put under her head.
Bewildered, I went to Kate's desk to ask what on earth was going on... had Amanda collapsed? Was it because of the heat? Were the paramedics on their way? Weren't we supposed to do something in the meantime?
Kate looked at me probably thinking I was utterly stupid and told me, as if it was obvious: 'she's just having a nap.'
oh, alright then... why not, after all? Maybe next week, I could bring my bathtub in the office to relax...
Ten minutes later, Amanda woke up, fresh as a rose and went back to work.
I'm not quite sure who would be the lucky winner of the nutter price in this company if we had such a competition...

July 14, 2005. No bank holiday again, for Ethel working in London. To cheer up, I had brought my giant French flag and hanged it in the office, before offering shots of Pastis and peanuts to my colleagues for l'apéro, before lunch. Just like my French friends and Leo, I was overexcited and very impatient to spend the evening celebrating our National Day at the Lycee Francais in South Kensington. They said there would be crepes, fries, merguez (spicy ultra thin sausages) and traditional music, a real guingette for us all to dance to French tunes once a year. Hours before the big event, as we went to the official website to check the time, we discovered everything had been cancelled, following July 7. It didn't seem to me the London French community was a number 1 target for terrorists, but I guess they must have had good reasons to ruin everyone's day.
July 14, 2006. Waking up around 11am on the first day of a long weekend, I feel good and relaxed. Coffee and cereals and here we go: all the way to... the sofa, watching what should hopefully be the last intervention of Chirac on a 14th of July... after five minutes, we are bored (nothing new from the old man) and there are cartoons on France5. Around 1pm, we sit down for a summer lunch... before a nap that takes most of the afternoon. Around 7pm, we leave the flat and head from the river bank, passing by little stands on the street selling merguez and fries. People are already in place for the fireworks, starting at 10.30pm. We have a walk in the old city, sit at a terrace to eat a crepe with French cider. After that we go back to the river bank and sit on the border, our feet in the water. The fireworks start and they even manage to have one looking like a smiley! When it's finished, everyone leaves to celebrate in the streets, bars and firemen stations. We walk to the little village square where I work and there is a little band with an accordion and people dancing. We dance too, little waltzes among children. It's good to be home sometimes.

When we arrived in our building's courtyard around 7.15pm with a cake and two chairs, there was just a young man there to welcome us: Charlie. Charlie's the one who put the posters in the hall... suggesting a big picnic for all the neighbours to meet. Since everyone just moved in two or three months ago, it sounded like a great idea. And a great idea it was. Two minutes later, the neighbour living opposite to us came down with a pasta salad. Then they all arrived, little by little, one by one or two by two and soon, there wasn't any room left on the table... or around it. Glasses were filled with fresh Rosé, emptied and refilled again. We discovered who was the girl with the dog, who was the owner of the salt and pepper cat. We discovered who owned which wifi network and who is the great pianist. We listened to the funny story of the neighbour who attempted to get rid of the two pigeons living on the top of the building (and succeeded!!). We realized we were not the only ones terrified by the scarecrow-looking-figure put next to a fourth-floor flat window. We got to know the doctor living on the fifth floor, the psychologist from the first and the two cartoonists expecting a baby. We talked about the people from flat 13 who complain about everything and who, although they were obviously at home, didn't come down to join the party. We talked about life, work and our new town, as well as millions of other things. Six hours later, the last of us headed upstairs, everybody promissing to have a big barbecue next time...
Our neighbours are great, youhouououou!!

The other day, we went to see a show at the old Roman Theatre. The theatre was built between -15 and the second century and stands on a big hill, close to the centre of Lyon. Each summer, they hold a music festival there called 'Les Nuits de Fourvière' (the Fourviere nights, Fourviere being the name of the area).
When we got there, we were told we couldn't take our umbrellas in (it wasn't raining but the sky was cloudy..) they were obviously scared we would throw our umbrellas on the cast if it wasn't any good. Then we were given little cushions made of plastic bubbles to protect our bottoms from the hard stones. A man carrying a big jar was going up and down the stairs to provide plastic glasses of beer (where are we to drink in plastic glasses, England ???). The show was great. It was an old film by Cocteau (The Beauty and the Beast) projected on a screen without the sound while music by Philip Glass was provided by the man himself and his band on the front stage. It was quite nice to think that two thousand years ago, men in togas were sitting right there, watching musicals. I really wish we could still wear togas nowadays, I reckon it inspires grandeur, respect and politeness... I might try and wear one just to see how it feels, walking around the old part of the city...