Muse-indoctrination.

I only had one class this morning, and thus finished at 09h20. This meant I ended up going home in the rush-hour, all be it completely the wrong one.

My only class was with the 3ème€, who are the cleverest, oldest and nicest children in the school. Well, not officially the nicest, but that seems to be the way it works out. The lesson was on 'English music', which basically involved me talking to them about music I like, and asking them about their tastes. I also showed them a section of a Muse DVD, and they did a 'fill-in-the-lyrics' sheet to one of the tracks. It's always satisfying when the pupils don't want to leave at the end of a lesson.

I'm off to Angers, a nearby town, tomorrow. I'll keep a tally of how many bad jokes are made about the name.

Nantes at Night.

A few nights ago, myself and another assistant went into town in the evening to go to a bar or something after both having a hard day of teaching. When we got to the intended bar, however, it was shut. So, we instead decided to go on a cultural Nantes-at-night tour, taking in pitch-black views of the cathedral, silhouettes of statues, and generally getting freezing cold.

Our efforts paid off though, as the River Edre was looking rather nice in the moonlight, resulting in a bunch of alarmingly-yellow photographs. I'd like to add that Nantes is nowhere near this yellow in daytime - I think it's a combination of streetlighting and my camera. Still, they look pretty...:

Marché

I visited an authentic French market on Saturday morning. Photos can't really capture the bustling hoards of French people fighting to purchase vegetables from the loudest farmers in the world, but they're better than nothing.

Conforming nicely to the French-people-wear-berets stereotype, this farmer was selling leeks and carrots:



They also had crazy amounts of pineapples for sale, at three for 1€. Yet every week there are farmers protesting that they're not getting paid enough. I can't help thinking that maybe it's their own fault for charging so little. Also, growing pineapples in France?! The bill for heating the greenhouses must be more than the cost of all the pineapples put together!



I like all of the colours that you find in French markets. The trouble is, they then put all the vegetables into a meal in a red wine sauce, and everything goes a deep reddy-brown colour. They should leave it raw, as it looks much more exciting:

Thirty-five Hour Week?

It's a hard life being an assistant. This week i've had to endure a gruelling three-hour week. And to make it worse, they insist on paying me as if i've worked a full week.


A photo from the Jardin des Plantes. Irrelevant, but pretty nonetheless.

Four hours of lessons were cancelled on Tuesday, as half the teachers were at training days in nearby Angers.

Then, on Thursday, most of the teachers at the school were on strike, so I decided to join them. Partly because I enjoyed striking so much last time, and partly because it meant I could send Frida off properly from the station; better than putting her on a tram and running off to teach.

All in all, i've worked out that i've been paid £69.58 for every hour that i've worked this week. When worked out pro-rata, that means my yearly salary would come to £141,000. Which is £6000 more than the Prime Minister.

It's a hard life being an assistant.

Swede in France.

Frida left this afternoon, and I wandered back alone to the shed to clear up the alarming amounts of facewipes, cotton buds and assorted make-up items which mysteriously appear on every surface in her wake...

It was awesome having her here for a week - it gave her a chance to see where i've been hiding since September, and gave me a chance to try and pretend there's actually stuff to do in Nantes!

Apologies in advance for the photo-laden post, but it's much easier to explain things with pictorial accompaniment:

The first thing we went to see was the castle, where we traipsed around the ramparts together in the rain. It's not the most spectacular castle in the world, as half of it seems to have blown away, fallen down or been replaced. However, it does provide a nice view of nantes' rooftops:


We also went to see the 'Machines de l'Ile' (the huge mechanical elephant), but he was hibernating, apparently. Instead, we wandered around the 'Chantiers Naval', which is the former shipbuilding dockyards of the Loire. I think they're protected by some kind of historical-building-presevation-thing, as there's a lot of open space which they could build apartment blocks on, with a view of the river. Only a matter of time, I suppose...


Another Swedish-hunger excursion brought us to the only KFC in Nantes, which is conveniently placed right next to the Nantes ring-road. To then go to the Atlantis shopping centre, we had to walk over the road on a deserted and foggy footbridge. The looming shadow behind Frida is the 'Zénith' - France's biggest indoor concert venue, which seems to be housing mainly Elton John gigs. Apparently he has quite a following here?


Once we'd crossed the footbridge, and avoided all trolls which were possibly residing underneath, we ended up on the other side, in Ikea, conveniently. I managed to avoid buying any flatpack furniture, but Frida and I both purchased one of these little fellows... Not entirely sure why. Still, at 0,99€, you can't go wrong!


It was difficult prising Frida away from her Kottbullar/Boulettes de Viande/Meatballs:


The last 'touristy' thing that we did was to climb up the 'Tour LU' - not as arduous an ascent as it may sound. The LU Tower was a part of the Lefevre-Utile biscuit factory, which relocated, leaving a shell of a factory and a single tower (there was previously an identical tower aside the remaining one). The building is now known as the Lieu Unique, and is a bar, restaurant, bookshop, and general cultural space for exhibitions, dances, concerts etc... Here's Frida faithfully recreating the exact shape of the tower with only her arms. Remarkable, eh?:


The week went way too quickly, and before we knew it, it was time for Frida to go back to the grey world of Reading, slushy snow, and the Number 17 Bus. Still, it was very nice to see her for a week. Our last three rendez-vous have been in three different countries. We're a truly tri-national couple!

Odds and Ends.

My internet has taken to the peculiar idea of only working when I don't actually need it. So, to decieve it, I now use it when I don't need it... Cunning, eh!

There's not a lot to report from Nantes for the past few days. The second week is drawing to a close (I have one class left today). The main event this week is that Frida is coming to visit tonight. She's going to be here for a week, so i'm going to show her all the various cultural things that are 'must-sees'. The problem is, half of them are actually extremely anti-climatic.

Take the Passage Pommeraye, for example:



It's pretty, and everything, but it's basically still just a row of shops. Shops in which i'll never buy anything, at that: womens' boots for 150€, Tintin in Japanese for 20€, hammocks for 90€... I wonder if people will look back at the shopping centres of today in 150 years time, and think how pretty they are? If 'Swan Walk' in Horsham and 'Broad Street Mall' in Reading are anything to go by, I highly doubt it.

Anyway, Frida's TGV arrives this evening, so i've still got just over twelve hours to make my shed guest-friendly. And 'storing' a broken packet of pasta shells loose on the floor probably isn't normal etiquette...

Muséum d'histoire naturelle.

Due to the excessively cold weather in Nantes (only -1º, but with the wind it feels like -100º), doing an 'inside' thing was necessary today. Having pretty much exhausted the rest of the cultural things in the city, the Natural History Museum seemed a good destination for the day. It's in a former bank, and looks suitably grand for a museum:



The first room was full of rocks and minerals, which was good for a couple of minutes, but after the 50th ammonite and the 20th dinosaur tooth, everything starts to look the same. The next room, however, seemed to forget that it was in a natural history museum - it was a vivarium, with lots of live snakes. My snake knowledge is pretty limited, but i'm fairly sure they were all evil, and wanted to bite me. The best one was this guy - i'd never seen the actual 'rattle' of a rattlesnake before:



There was also a room about eclipses, which was interesting, but again, i'm not entirely sure if it belonged in a natural history museum?

The best room of all was the final one, which housed the most stuffed animals i've ever seen in my life. And i'm not talking teddy-bears. Think of any animal, and i'm pretty sure they had a stuffed one in this museum. There were, to name a few: an elephant, bears (grizzly, polar and koala), a tiger, a turtle, a platypus(!), a lemming, and every bird under the sun. It seemed a bit morbid really, as they were all very much dead. It felt a bit like a paused David Attenborough DVD.


A view across to the glass cases - in which there's an elephant, a skunk, and a excessively large helping of armadillos.


Three different types of heron. (Not seven, Mum and Dad!)


The main taxidermy gallery at the museum. Like Noah's ark, but more dead. And only one of each animal...


A stuffed badger. What's not to like?

Overall, it was a good museum, but not the most cheerful of experiences! Still, at least i've seen a real platypus now. Stupid creatures...

First week back.

The first week back at school is over. Finally! It was mainly calm at the beginning of the week, but by the end, the pupils had remembered how to misbehave. One paper-pellet-pelting incident resulted in me confiscating this (although I actually wanted to keep it, as it's great fun to use to get sweet wrappers in the bin from the other side of the shed):


It's basically a tram ticket with two pieces of elastic, one a each end, making an excellent catapult.

In other news, I went to see Avatar in 3-D, and French, at the Gaumont cinema in the centre of Nantes. It's a really good film. Maybe a tad long, at almost three hours, but pretty watchable nonetheless. It's the first 3-D film that i've seen where it's subtly so; there weren't things leaping out at you all the time, and random objects weren't being flung towards the audience, and it was better for it.

Free afternoon.

Today, I finished early, as one of my teachers was away at a training day in Angers (the place where Cointreau comes from - suspicious, eh...).

So I decided to have an afternoon of various bits and pieces, or whatever caught my attention. This is roughly how it went:

• I ate a packet of Skips - an English luxury.
• I put my socks into rainbow order. Brown, black and white threw me; I snuck in pink between Red and Orange. Or, as I like to call them, 'Richard' and 'Of'.
• I ate Green and Black's chocolate intermittently from 3pm to 9pm. Best chocolate ever.
• I 'read' a chapter in my French grammar book. Not sure what it was about...
• I accidentally listened to Westlife on Spotify, and it turns out I know all of the words. I blame Louisa, my older sister.

Nothing too exciting, but it's surprising how easy it is to waste six hours without even realising it. Now, do beige socks come before or after 'York'...?

Mansion vs. Shed

I've missed my shed. I never thought i'd say that, but there it is. I reckon that small houses are massively underrated. With a small house, there's less to clean, less to heat, less distance to walk, and less to pay. You can't lose! Anyway, as it's a Sunday afternoon, and entertainment is fairly limited, I think a little comparison between houses might be in order...

We'll take two houses completely at random: Updown Court in Windlesham, Surrey, and Chez Shed in Nantes, France.

Updown Court boasts 103 rooms (24 of these are bedrooms, each with an ensuite bathroom):



Chez Shed boasts 2 rooms (1 of these is a bedroom, the other is the ensuite bathroom):



Other features of Updown Court include: a two-lane bowling alley, five swimming pools, a squash court, a floodlit tennis court, a wine cellar, a panic room in case of a terrorist attack, a 50-seat cinema, a heated marble driveway, and an underground garage with enough room for eight limousines.

Other features of Chez Shed include:

A 'compact' swimming pool (note the scale from the horse and the whale):



An 'ecological' one-lane, six-pin bowling alley ( this is a close-up of the pins):



A multi-use sports arena (currently used mainly for walking):



A three-seat cinema (heated, complete with a view of the bowling alley, and a choice of four-and-a-half films. Or whatever's on):



An overground parking area with enough space as many limousines as you need (mine are currently all away):


All in all, there seem to be literally no advantages of having a larger property - there's exactly the same features to be found in a house a fraction of the size. And, Chez Shed is roughly £69,997,900 cheaper than Updown Court. Winner all round.