Gavin's Life

GrAAduate.

2011-11-19T06:54:00.001Z

Once again, this blog has been neglected. At least this time I have a reasonable excuse: I've now got a job.

I'm working at the AA in Basingstoke, in the internal communications department. I have a desk and everything, and even a little label printer, which has led to almost everything being labelled, including the label machine itself.

Fanum House, the AA HQ. I live on the 8th floor, with a view of fields where there seem to be more border collies than people.

The job itself has so far turned out to be pretty good. I never thought I'd actually look forward to going to work, but it's happened! Among many other things, I'm currently editing the staff magazine. While it's quite a lot of work, it's great fun. Each day I'm writing and editing articles on various things happening across the company, whether it's a new business acquisition, a charity event in Newcastle or a look back at the history of the company.

The only downside to the job is the commute to Basingstoke each morning, as I have to leave the house at 07:30 every morning to get there for 09:00. First Great Western have conveniently timed the trains so that even if I leave work on time, I still don't get home until 18:30. And that's if the trains are on time, which is a rare occasion.

In a bid to keep this blog updated more regularly, I've downloaded a 'blogger' app on my phone which allows me to post. However, this may well lead to my pocket having regular input, so apologies in advance for the next post, which will probably be gibberish.

Hats and Baths

2011-07-17T19:48:00.000+01:00

It seems I've neglected this blog once again. Sorry, blog. I'm back now.

One reason for my lack of writing is that since finishing my exams, I've been grappling with 'real-life', and attempting to work out what to do with it. In between application forms and scouring the Internet for jobs, I've been filling my time with a number of things:

I am in there somewhere, although you can mainly see my chin.

As you probably guessed from the photo, I graduated. I donned my cape and silly-hat, and collected my certificate from the Vice Chancellor of The University of Reading. And that was that. Four years of my life gone, almost £30,000 spent, and all for a certificate and an envelope. It was still a good day, and it was nice celebrating the day with everyone from the last four years. In a nice little circular loop, I graduated next to Michael, who I met on the first night in Windsor Hall on 30th October 2007, when we realised we had both foolishly signed up for French and Politics.

Michael and I, survivors of many lectures together.

On another note, for the past couple of weeks, I've been teaching in an English-language summer school, run by an organisation called 'EJO'. We've taken over a wing of The Abbey School in Reading, and have filled it with a variety of children from a variety of countries. In the last week I've been teaching Omanis, Italians, Spaniards and Russians. Their time in England is a mix of English lessons, excursions and activities, all of which I seem to play a rather active role in. So far, they've been on trips to Bath, Bristol, Winchester, London, Oxford, and they'll go to Stonehenge, Salisbury, and London again in the next week.

A Roman Bath. Could do with a clean.

The Royal Crescent. Terraced housing for rich people.

My lessons so far have been fairly similar to those from my year abroad. I've done adverts, newspapers, debates, tongue-twisters and grammar, and even plucked up the courage to lead 15 Russian children in a rousing rendition of 'Let It Be', accompanied by my fumbled strumming on a guitar.

I'm sure there's been much more going on than just graduating and teaching, but that'll do for now. I'll try to keep more up-to-date in future.

The day Obama came to visit.

2011-05-26T10:30:00.001+01:00

Over the past couple of days, President Obama has been in London. In his time here, he met the Queen, Prince Philip, Tom Hanks, David Beckham, Kate Middleton, Colin Firth and J.K. Rowling. A notable name missing from that list is my own, so I decided to pop to London yesterday to say 'hello'.

I went with a couple of friends from university - Michael and Mary. We got on the train with little idea of Obama's schedule for the day, as it didn't seem to be overly-publicised, probably for security reasons. The initial plan was to go on the Tube straight to Westminster, and watch the day unfold there. However, we were on the Underground when it emerged that Michael, being a Northerner, had never seen Buckingham Palace. We decided to get off at Green(e) Park, and walk across to the Palace. Coincidentally, our route across the park took us right behind Lancaster House, where there was a huge police presence, and helicopters overhead. Little did we know that we'd just stumbled upon the place where Cameron and Obama were holding their press conference. We peered through the fence for a minute, before a couple of horses shouted at us to move away.

The horses that told us to move.

We rounded the corner, and saw the Presidential motorcade on The Mall, complete with motorbikes zooming around, armoured Jeeps blocking the road, and the all-important 'Beast', Obama's car, somewhere in the middle.

The motorcade entering Lancaster House.

We decided to hang around outside the Palace for the press conference to end, so we'd be able to catch Obama when he left. We wandered around for a bit, and noticed George Alagiah doing an interview for the BBC. The obvious thing to to was to stand around in the background, phoning anyone who was near a TV to tell them we were famous. However, upon phoning my brother, Ross, it turned out the BBC News Channel was focusing on the press conference in Lancaster House. Logical, I suppose.

George Alagiah himself. Highlight of the day.

Eventually, Obama and Cameron stopped talking, and the motorcade left Lancaster House, and turned onto The Mall. We got a good view of the car going past, and saw Barack waving in the back. He must get really bored or having to wave whenever he drives anywhere.

The motorcade approaching Buckingham Palace.

We then wandered through St. James' Park, past the numerous pelicans and tourists, to Horseguards Parade, then cut trough to Whitehall, and walked past Downing Street to get to Parliament Square. We knew that Obama was giving a speech in Westminster Palace at 3pm, so we wanted to get a good spot to see his car. Apparently, twice simply wasn't enough.

Security was tight, and the police were armed... with binoculars. (Mary's photo. She has a better camera than me.)

We were originally standing by the normal entrance to Parliament, when the police moved us out of the way to let Peter Mandleson through. It was then that we realised we were at the wrong gate - there was no way they were going to make Obama follow in Mandleson's tracks.

The bulk of the press photographers and film crew were standing opposite the Sovereign's Entrance, so we took a position amid them, and awaited our third sighting of the President and his entourage. As before, the police bikes sped past, stopping traffic, then the motorcade drew up and turned into the gate to Westminster Palace. We hadn't expected Obama to get out of the car, but one of the Secret Service agents opened the foot-thick door of his car and out stepped the President.

'The Beast' arriving at Westminister Palace. You can see his head in back of the car.

Barack Obama getting out of the car.

Adjusting his presidential suit.


Checking to see if I had turned up.

The press photographers went into paparazzi-mode, shouting at everyone and everything, jostling people with their lenses, their shutters clattering away behind us. We weren't allowed to get too close, and my camera's not particularly good, but it was nice nonetheless to get a couple of photographs.

Overall, it was a good day out. Alagiah and Obama in one day has satisfied the celebrity-spotter in me for at least a couple of weeks.

End of Education.

2011-05-20T17:43:00.000+01:00

I had my last exam today. Or, as I like to call it, my final final. It was odd leaving the exam hall, knowing that if all goes well, the next time I'm there I'll be wearing a gown and a mortarboard. Now seems to be a good time to look back at my education so far, so apologies for the reminiscent nature of this post!

I still remember my first day at Holbrook Primary School. I was is Ms. Sowery's class, and as a class we all sat in a circle and said our names, and then held hands and waved our arms up and down. As you do.

Holbrook School. A photo from the olden days.

It must have been in the first couple of weeks or term that wewere told to write a poem. Being a scared little four-year old, I was writing a poem about Ms. Sowery, when I realised that I didn't know a single word that rhymed with 'Sowery'. She came over, taught me the word 'boughery' and explained that it's a word for when there's lots of branches over the road. I think it's the first thing I remember consciously learning.

I'm 22 now. In my time in education, I've sat through countless exams. Year Two SATs, Year Six SATs, end-of year exams in Year 7 and 8, more SATs in Year 9, then numerous GCSE modules in Year 10 and 11. AS levels and A levels in college, then end-of-year exams in the first two years at university, before my finals this year.

Not once, in one single exam or class in the last eighteen years, since Ms. Sowery's reception class, have I ever had the chance to use the word 'boughery'. Pity.

A boughery. Not a useful word. (from Etrusia's Flickr)

Exams, sheds and beds.

2011-05-09T17:15:00.000+01:00

As I write this, I should probably be revising for exams. But never mind.

I had my final French-language exam this morning - a 'TP' exam ('travaux pratiques', for long), which is a strange mix of comprehension, creative writing and paraphrasing. I sat in Reading University's deceptively-titled 'Great Hall' for three hours, determining the rest of my life via a few ill-chosen and badly-conjugated verbs. It dawned on me as I left the exam that I'm under no obligation to ever speak French again in my entire life. (I'll let you know how long I last.)

The Great Hall. Which is too exam-y to be 'great'.

After the exam I walked into town to get my hair cut. I thought that after a difficult morning of work, it'd be nice to do something non-academic for a couple of hours. I sat down in the chair and began the idle hairdresser-chatting: Me "No, it's not my day off, I'm a student", Ever-so-witty hairdresser: "Oh, every day's a day off then!".

I then discovered, much to my annoyance, that I'd somehow managed to find the only French hairdresser in the whole of Reading. He then proceeded to chat away in French about his planned trips to Disneyland Paris, throwing in all kinds of subjunctive, indicative, imperative and infinitive, and confirming my suspicions that I definitely can't speak French, and most-likely didn't pass the exam. Ah well, c'est la vie! (I lasted two paragraphs)

My next exams are on Wednesday, when I have a three-hour exam at 9am, a break of two hours, then another three-hour exam at 2pm. Excellent timetabling there, Politics Department.

On a completely unrelated, but fairly interesting note, I saw this item on the news today, and found it worryingly relevant to my living arrangements last year. I think I might've been conned. Compare the following:

BBC News article on 'sheds with beds'.
My 2010 blog entry on my very own 'shed with a bed'.

At least mine had a swimming pool included.

Easter in Horsham

2011-04-28T16:08:00.002+01:00

Last Wednesday, I managed to eventually return home for a bit. I packed as many clothes and revision notes as I could into my bag, then hopped on the train at Reading to return to Horsham.

I happened to be there at the same time as Piazza Italia, a three-day festival celebrating all things Italian. I'm not sure of the Italian population of Horsham, but I'm fairly sure it's below 1%. This didn't stop the organisers from turning the town centre into a strange version of Italy, which seemed to be focused a lot more on the food, drink, cars and glamour than the corruption, mafia and poor driving.

On each of the three days, Dad and I went to town to watch the cars arrive, in convoy, from a hotel on the outskirts of Horsham. The first day saw almost 100 Ferraris parked in the Carfax, the main square in the town. On the Saturday, it was the turn of the Minis, then Sunday saw the leftovers arrive, with Alfa Romeos, Fiats, Lamborghinis, a Pagani Zonda and a Porsche, which seemed to have sneaked in somehow.

Some Fiat 500s, in patriotic colours. If they were French.

Definitely a considerate driver.

Ferraris in the Carfax.

Minis. Not Italian, unless used for bank robberies.

It was nice to be back home, and between cars, I actually managed to get some revision done. It was still all-too easy to accidentally end up sitting outside under the apple blossom with a cool drink, listening to the birds and watching the guinea-pigs scampering around. If you attempted the same thing in Reading, it'd be under the dripping overflow from the toilet upstairs, listening to the sound of two A-roads within 100 yards of the garden, and watching the men demolishing the Indian takeaway a few doors down. Not quite the same, I think you'll agree!


The garden in Horsham. If you click on the photo, you can see all the weeds in the flowerbeds. So don't.

My first exam is on Tuesday, when I'll have to sit down and write three essays in three hours on electoral reform. Interesting and enjoyable as it is (and I mean that genuinely, in case it sounds otherwise), I'll be glad to get the exam out of the way!

Tea, Travels and Terracotta.

2011-04-20T18:06:00.000+01:00

I'm sure that anyone who's reading this already knows that revision is my main occupation at the moment. It's House of Lords reform today. Anyway, I'm not going to mention it again, but would like to reassure you that I'm still doing plenty of it (mainly aimed at Mum and Dad...!).

In between books and learning, I've found enough time to do a few interesting bits and pieces. One of them is making this house, which is loosely based upon M&D's house in France. It was originally a present for Dad for Father's Day 2010, but like any construction project, it went drastically over-budget and I was forced to completely abandon the inital schedule. It's now got half-a-roof of terracotta tiles, and is fully-glazed, but the kitchen is still very much a Budweiser box, and there's no front door. I'm expecting a delivery of more clay when my next installment of student loan arrives, and we're hoping to be in by Christmas.

It IS that yellow in real life.

Other nice distractions were goodbye-visits by a few friends who are off on travels to various places around the world. Dave and Chris are going on a grand tour of Europe, while Matt is going to brave The Americas with some friends from school. I'm sure they're going to have a good time - I think I'd much rather be trekking through the Andes and sampling the bars of Bruges than sitting in basement in Reading!

Chris looks like he's having second thoughts.

Looking for Cancun on the ticket machine.

A final note before I return to Lords reform is that I seem to have become competely dependent on tea, in silly quantities. Between reading each page of a book, I treat myself to a sip, resulting in worrying scenes such as this one:

Apparently there's no Earl of Grey in the House of Lords.

Canvassing.

2011-04-11T18:18:00.000+01:00

Another week of revision has begun. Today, it’s more electoral systems, and how different systems affect the election turnout. As you may have noticed there seems to be a theme developing: the more work I need to do, the higher the frequency of posts on here.

One thing I remembered today is that I like painting. I used to paint quite a bit, but then stopped, for some reason. The last thing I painted was this Parisian street, for my Dad’s Christmas present. I think it was Christmas, anyway. It was definitely a while ago.

I wrote 'café' on the window, as I thought it looked too much like a greenhouse.

I’ve also got a half-finished canvas of Place Royale, a square in Nantes. I started it in August of last year, but never actually got around to finishing it. I might finish that this week, to treat myself if I get enough politics revision done.

This post has just made me realise I only seem to be able to paint French street scenes. And not particularly well, at that. I should probably try painting the intricacies of electoral systems instead. That way I might actually remember them.

Basil and Books

2011-04-08T20:07:00.002+01:00

This afternoon I decided that I wanted to have some pesto pasta. But, seeing as I have a lot of procrastinating to be doing, a quick meal simply wouldn't do; In order to avoid reading about the electoral systems of Ireland, I needed to make it from scratch. All the pesto recipes that I could find involved a blender, which I don't have.

I was about to completely abandon the idea when I realised that pesto probably came a long time before the blender, and there's bound to be another way of making it. Hence the following:


Parmesan, pine nuts, olive oil, salt, garlic, and basil

I stripped half of the leaves from a conveniently-nearby basil plant, and gathered them together on a chopping board. I then started to chop them, which took a surprisingly long time, and I frequently almost lost the tips of my fingers. I think I must have cut some of the leaves so small that they were invisible to the naked eye; a lot of them seemed to disappear. Hmm.

The mysterious disappearing-basil.

I similarly chopped up the pine nuts and garlic (fingers still intact), and grated some parmesan into the same bowl, before adding some olive oil, salt and pepper then mixing it all up.

Before mixing.

After a lot of mixing and mashing the paste against the side of the bowl to make it look more pesto-y, I put the pasta on the hob while the pesto basilified itself a bit more.

It was meant to be an artistic angle. But no, just blurry.

To try and make it authentically Italian (and bear it in mind I've never been to Italy in my life), I added some fresh mozzarella to the top, cracked an egg yolk into the middle, then spent probably-too-long toying with the idea of putting an decorative basil leaf on the top. I didn't.

It looks like an incredibly mouldy fried egg.

It tasted surprisingly nice, considering there was no real recipe or plan. If anything, it might've even been a bit too basil-ly. The most important thing though, is that it took at least 30 minutes to do. Which meant 30 minutes less of revising electoral systems.

After dinner, I reluctantly returned to revision, and went back to poring over countless articles about electoral reform in Ireland. The author of the first book I read...?

Basil Chubb.

Career Ideas

2011-04-05T19:24:00.001+01:00

Now that I can see again, and haven't (yet) repeated the weekend's eye incident, I've been spending a lot of time trying to start a 3000-word essay on the French Revolution. It's not a particularly exciting essay, but it's either that or doing real revision, which is infinitely worse.

Robespierre. It's his fault I have to write an essay.

Occasionally, to put off doing the essay, I've been looking at possible job options. I graduate in two months' time; real-life is creeping steadily closer. My career ideas, however, have been getting increasingly far-fetched and ridiculous. In the past couple of months, I have considered the following:

Astronaut
Crocodile sanctuary-man
Café owner in South America
Farmer (ploughing looks fun)
Author
Postman (of a new, yet-to-be-made Royal Mail competitor)
Fighter pilot (but not a killing one. A friendly one)
Lock-keeper

A decent amount of variation, I think, although I'm not sure of the salary of some of them. I can't imagine being a lock-keeper pays particularly well, for instance. However, if I combined it with being an author, while farming a patch of watercress in the lock, for I could probably make a reasonable living.

On another, completely-unrelated note, there was a nice sunset over Reading a couple of days ago. One that deserved being photographed, I reckoned. Here it is:

Reading at sunset (massive amounts of crime not pictured).

Now, enough procrastination. Back to the essay. Otherwise I'll never be able to keep that lock.

.

Eye Issues

2011-04-03T16:11:00.000+01:00

A normal Sunday for me usually involves standing at the till in a large department store, bleeping and bagging the various bits and pieces that people deem it necessary to buy.

This is the shop that I work in. That is not me. (photo from Ceeko's Flickr)

Today was meant to be a normal Sunday, until I climbed out of the shower, and started to get dressed. When it came to putting on deodorant, I picked it up, pressed the little button at the top. Nothing came out. Still bleary-eyed and half-asleep, I adjusted the nozzle. Again, nothing came out. I then tried to adjust it again, when it suddenly decided to blast a substantial amount of Sure For Men™ directly into my left eye. I yelped, and frantically splashed water into my eye to try to stop the stinging. It then dawned on me that it might be quite dangerous to have an eye full of deodorant, so I picked up the aerosol can, and tried to read the tiny print on the side. At that point, my right eye decided that stinging looked fun, and had a go too, forcing me to jam my eyes shut, and thus rendering me temporarily blind, and unsure of whether it would become a permanent thing.

Eventually, I began to be able to see again, and my eyes stopped stinging. I left for work, and walked there fairly uneventfully. However, when I arrived at the aforementioned large department store, it turned out the air conditioning was on. A few minutes after taking my perch behind the till, my eye started to cry. It didn't just start to water, or just begin to well up. Oh no, my tear duct decided that the perfect time to irrigate my eye was just when a customer was coming to the till. And while it was at it, the tear duct apprently decided that my entire face could do with a clean, and dutifully provided enough tears to do so.

The culprit.

After attempting to stem the flow with various things from the medical box, which should probably have been thrown out in 1987, I decided to attempt the trek to the 'eye casualty' at the local hospital. Normally a fairly simple walk, but with one eye out-of-action, a surprisingly difficult one. After meandering my way across Reading, and arriving at the hospital, I found a map that explained various departments and wards of the hospital. As some kind of joke, the label for the eye clinic seemed to be in the smallest font ever. After finding it, and after a short wait, I saw a doctor, who knowingly nodded when I explained what I'd done, then proceeded to poke around in my eyes, testing them with litmus paper, weird lights and cleaning solution, before prescribing some eye drops and advising me that the dryness is going to last for last a few days. I'm now sitting on the sofa, applying eye drops every few minutes, and scowling at the deodorant can on the floor, where it can stay for a while, as far as I'm concerned.

Basically, I wouldn't recommend spraying deodorant in your own face. Although I imagine my eye now smells excellent. And it certainly won't sweat any time soon.

Je suis dans la bibliotheque.

2011-03-30T16:58:00.002+01:00

So, the Easter break is already here. Unfortunately it won't be a break at all. In the space of three weeks in May, I'll be spending a good few hours sitting in various buldings around campus, and determining the direction of the rest of my life with a few badly-written essays.

Most of my waking hours are going to be spent in this building:

Five floors. 1.2 million books. Nowhere near enough plug sockets.

The trouble is, just because i'm in the library doesn't mean I'm actually doing anything useful. Last week I spent at least an hour poring over a map from 1939, simply to see if I could find my house. I couldn't. And just yesterday I spent the majority of the morning looking out of the window, watching people's reactions upon finding out the cash machine had run out of money. Most seemed to just walk away; one man decided the money was probably hiding somehwere, and proceeded to look around the corner before returning and peering at the screen.

Another highlight of a 'revision' day last week was when this decided to fly over:

It's an airship. I think.

Obviously, it wouldn't suffice to simply look at it, then get back to work. Oh no, I had to take a photo, wonder what the difference between an airship and a blimp is,research it, look at how much they cost to run, watch videos of blimps being inflated, then wonder what the French word for 'blimp' is. All while I was meant to be writing an essay on constitutional reform.

It's going to be a long time until Easter...

Reading Half Marathon.

2011-03-20T19:43:00.002Z

I’ve realised I haven’t posted anything on here for ages. I seemed to make a grand re-appearance, and then promptly forgot to write anything else. But now I’m back again, possibly to do precisely the same thing again. We’ll see.

This morning I wandered up to campus at 10am to cheer on a couple of friends, James and Eve, who were running in the Reading Half Marathon. A group of us found some convenient railings, and stood there waiting for the masses of people to start sprinting past.

Eventually, a car drove past, being chased by a man in a wheelchair who was going far faster than is probably allowed. A few minutes later, a couple of police motorbikes came into view, followed by four Kenyan men who seemed to be taking the whole thing very seriously (it worked – apparently they took the top four places). Finally, the hoards of people arrived, in a variety of guises. Batman was among the first to pass, with Spiderman, Superman and other assorted superheroes following him. Also running were a Lucozade bottle, a fish, a chip, Spongebob Squarepants, a variety of insects, and a camel. Oh, and there was a banana. There’s always a banana.

The Lucozade bottle, happily running along. (Photo from Toffee Raspberry on Flickr)

Our friends did come running past, both so fast that we almost missed them. Surprisingly, they didn’t want to stop and chat...

After the 17,000 runners had passed, and I couldn’t find any further excuses, I went back to my second home, the University Library. Six-thousand words of essay are due in on this coming Friday, and they’re not going to write themselves. Trust me; I tried that with the last one.

I'm back!

2011-01-18T19:01:00.000Z

And so the blog returns. You may have noticed that the title has changed. That’s mainly due to the fact that I’m no longer in Nantes. Rather than abandoning this blog, and leaving it in a corner of the internet to gather dust, I decided it’d be nicer to keep it going.

So, quite a bit has changed since I last posted on here. Here is a brief summary of what the past few months have held:

I returned to England
I returned to Reading
I found a flat in Reading
I got a weekend job at John Lewis.
I started the last year of my degree.
I started my dissertation.
I finished my dissertation.
Christmas presents were wrapped.
Autumn Term ended.
I went to Sweden.
I returned to England
Spring term began.

There we go, now you’re all up to speed on everything. There probably were some other things that happened, but that’ll do. Future posts will hopefully be more exciting than this one, but I felt the six-month absence needed to be explained! I'll leave you with some recent photographs:

The fountain in Forbury Garden, Reading. It was cold.

Completed dissertation!

View across a snowy Reading campus.

Sad Times.

2010-05-03T09:35:00.002+01:00

A sad thing happened yesterday – I bought my ticket home. On the morning of the 8th of May, I will arrive in Paris, climb aboard a Eurostar, and reluctantly return to England.

I really don’t want to, but it’s got to happen. If I could transport family, Frida and friends (‘the three Fs’) to France, i’d be happy to live here long term, but that’s not entirely practical. Besides, England needs me - I leave for a few months, and the country falls into disarray, with elections, and new Prime Ministers popping up all over the place.

So, in a nice end-of-France post, I thought I’d make a list of some of the things i’m going to miss about France. It’s difficult to think of them all off the top of my head, as i’ll probably only realise a lot of them once i’m back in the UK. Still, here’s a few:

Fresh baguettes - stereotypical, but true
Trams. I actually love them.
Ordering food in a restaurant, and not being entirely sure what it is until it arrives.
Complaining about the lack of bacon.
Being a foreigner.
Learning a few new words every day. Forgetting them the next.
Getting lost in the city, and simply wandering around until finding out where I am.
Being able to understand people, when they think you have no idea what they’re saying.
Being a ‘celebrity’ in school, and having every pupil saying “Good morneeng, Gaveen” as they walk past.
The more relaxing speed of life. England is too fast, busy and grey. France is the opposite.

Also, i'm not sure what is going to happen to this blog once i've left Nantes. I'd like to carry it on, but my life in Reading tends to be fairly dull. It'd just end up being hundreds of Airfix Models and Fimo Fires. And let's face it, who wants to read about that!

Last Week of Lessons.

2010-04-30T11:35:00.008+01:00

So, it's over. Today I had my last-ever class. The seven months have gone incredibly quickly, and I don't really want to stop teaching!

A lot of pupils had made me 'goodbye' cards and posters. Some of them were cute and well-written, some of them were a bit last-minute, and simply a scrawled poster. I have a few favourites, though, such as this one, which was done by a particularly inventive pupil. Apparently it shows the Conquistadors invading South America and the Aztec people fighting them off. An obvious choice for an English assistant.

That's maize they're growing in the fenced-area. This is going on my wall when i return to England.

This one, however, is the best of all. It's a joint effort from a class of 10-year olds. It's not artistic, but the message they wrote on it is the best thing i've ever read:

You can zoom in to see the message, which reads:

"For Gavin I go missed you
A feeling which is down at the bottom of l'heart at the bottom of the eyes a good qu it is necessary to have a good qu it is nessecary to give a mistery which give l'friendship. It adore Gavine passes a good voyage."

It does make me wonder if they've learned a single thing this year. Never mind.

With my two favourite classes, it was not a proper goodbye, as i'll be meeting up with them in a couple of weeks in London. They're all going to be there on a school trip, and i'm going to accompany them for a day around various tourist attractions. Apparently they're looking forward to seeing me in my 'native habitat'..!

Spitfire Stop-motion.

2010-04-25T19:14:00.005+01:00

A while ago on the BBC, there was a series called James May's Toy Stories, which basically made giant versions of childhood toys. One of the episodes involved building a huge Airfix model. I'd pretty much forgotten that Airfix existed, but felt briefly inspired to build a Spitfire, before quickly forgetting once again.

Then, Frida sent a parcel to France containing an Spitfire Airfix kit for 'a boring day in the shed'. Today, being Sunday, was that day, and so I made my Spitfire. Not content with simply making it, I decided to make a short (very) stop-motion film of the model, complete with authentic Spitfire engine noises.

Like I said, Sunday + France = Suddenly taking up weird hobbies. Probably need to get out more.

Nantes Carnival.

2010-04-21T16:32:00.005+01:00

Last Sunday, there was a carnival in Nantes. A french friend reliably informs me that it's the beginning of a festival-week where Nantais people celebrate the end of the winter, and the beginning of the spring. All I know is that it involved an unhealthy amount of confetti, squirting-string and bizarre floats.

There were all kinds of strange things coming down the road, such as a troupe of Sarkozys, Noddy and friends, and some robots with whisk-hand. People were spraying the ones they didn't like with the squirty-string stuff, so the Sarkozys were covered pretty quickly.

Noddy, PC Plod and Big Ears. Interestingly, in French Noddy is called 'Oui-Oui' (yes-yes), and Big Ears is 'Potiron' (pumpkin).

Some of the eleven Sarkozys (Sarkozi?)

Whisky men.

A deep-sea diver with a spider as a hand acting as a puppeteer to the mayor of Nantes. Obviously.

There was a lot of confetti on the floor by the end of the parade.

Now for a blog-first - there should be a video just under here. Apparently Noddy and crew enjoy listening to Muse when they are in procession. How odd.

Salmon Shenanigans.

2010-04-21T16:15:00.006+01:00

My trip to Geneva was cancelled, due to an certain Icelandic volcano. This means i've got a whole week to fill. Today, I passed the time by making an overly-extravagant lunch.

I don't know what they're actually called, but never mind. I made a dill sauce out of oil, vinegar, cream, lemon juice, salt and sugar and left it for a bit to make it all dill-y. While I was waiting, I prepared some cucumber, salad, and smoked salmon on a plate, then poured the dill sauce on top.

I'm thinking of trying to make sushi next, but i'm scared I might poison myself. I might wait until i'm back in the UK, where i'm certain of my fish-vocab.

Paris with Swede.

2010-04-18T09:07:00.005+01:00

For the first week of my Easter holidays, I met up with Frida in Paris. It's conveniently halfway between Nantes and Reading, and so provided a convenient place to see her.

Bear in mind we're both students, so it was Paris-on-a-budget. The hotel was fairly cheap and cheerful, but it provided a bed and a bathroom, so we can't complain too much.

Frida had a new digital SLR, and thus had to take a photo of everything. Including my camera.

We'd already been to Paris in February of 2009, and 'done' most of the touristy things, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Musée D'Orsay, the Louvre etc., so we tried to find some different, less touristy things to do. The only problem is that the less-touristy things are that for a reason - they're not as good.

Int he five days that we were in Paris, I reckon we walked about 25 - 30 miles. And i'm not even exaggerating. Every morning we woke up at 09h00 and left the hotel, never with any real plan for the day. This resulted in us walking a lot. The weather was amazing for the whole week, and it felt a shame to spend it racing around undergound in sweaty trains.

Spring in Paris means a lot of flowers, most of which Frida has captured on film (/SD card).

We'd already been up the Eiffel Tower in the daytime and at night, so the only time that remained was at sunset. We didn't know it at the time, but the redness of the sky was die to the Icelandic volcano eruption filling the sky with volcanic ash. This meant that the sunset looked unusual, but it also made it very hazy. As we were standing at the top of the tower, they turned the lights on. They have a mix of normal floodlighting and flashing strobe lights. The strange thing is, when the strobe lights are on, there are just as many flashes coming up from the ground level as everyone takes photos of the lit-up tower.

Volcanic sunset over Paris. I never thought i'd type that sentence.

The Eiffel Tower in the evening sun.

Once the sun actually set, it got dark pretty quickly, so we walked by the River Seine for a bit before getting a bit cold and retreating back to the hotel.

A carousel by the Eiffel Tower

A couple were having their wedding photos by the tower. I thought i'd join in.

On one of the days we went to Montmartre, and waled around for an afternoon. I like Montmartre, as it feels a bit like a village within a city. The cobbled streets are narrow and winding, and every corner brings an interesting house, little vineyard or shop full of tourist tat...

A view from Montmartre across a, once again, hazy Paris.

In the five days we were in Paris, I took 384 photos. I reckon Frida took even more. Maybe slightly excessive, but it was such a nice week that it felt necessary to document every single bit of it!

Day at the Beach.

2010-04-12T11:43:00.005+01:00

Last time I went to Pornic, it was the 14th of October, a couple of weeks after I arrived in France. I remember the place being nice, but it was a bit cold for too much beach time.

This time, however, it was much better. The weather was nearing 20°c, and it was sunny all day. One of my French friends has a static caravan by the sea, so a few of us went down in a couple of cars for a day-at-the-beach.

The main area of Pornic is a fishing port, but either side of the port are 21 small beaches, varying in size from 500m long, to a few feet wide. As it's still early April, there's hardly any tourists invading the coast yet.

The view from some of the rocks beside the beach.

The marina at Pornic.

We arrived at the coat at about midday, and ended up staying there until midnight. Unfortunately, I spent the majority of the time sitting in one direction, which has resulted in only one half of my face being tanned. Not a good look.

Possibly the world's smallest beach. I could actually touch both sides at the same time. We had to paddle to get to this one.

A view across the beaches to the town.

Deliciously warm sand.

I took a photo looking down onto a beach from the cliffs, where there were a few groups of people sunbathing under parasols. I thought it made quite a nice picture, until I zoomed in on the picture, and realised it was a 'plage nudiste'. I'm thought i'd best leave that one off of here...

End of Term.

2010-04-09T11:36:00.003+01:00

Another Friday, another week gone. Time in France goes scarily fast. It must be something to do with the time difference, or something...

The next two weeks are 'les vacances de Pâques', or the Easter holidays. Easter has already come and gone, but nothing stops the French from having another holiday! The schools are off for two weeks, until the last week of April.

I intend to make the most of the two weeks of sun and warmth before I return to drizzly England, so my schedule is roughly as follows:

A BBQ at the beach this Saturday
Mum, Dad and Ross coming to visit this Sunday
Off to Paris with Frida on Monday
Return from Paris on Saturday
Off to Geneva with other assistants on the following Monday
Return from Geneva on the following Saturday

It's a fairly packed couple of weeks, but I shall endeavour to update this as often as I can.

Joyeuses Pâques!

2010-04-04T13:38:00.008+01:00

It's Easter Sunday, and i'm sitting in a shed in France. It doesn't sound very attractive, but you'd be surprised. It's sunny outside, and there were children running around earlier looking for eggs in the garden. This morning, in true Greene-family fashion, I was about to paint a boiled egg, when it occured to me that acrylic paints aren't edible. So, I just ate the egg instead. Never mind.

The best thing about being away from England for easter is that I completely avoid all the 'hilarious' puns which appear at this time of year. This is the poster which was displayed in the One Stop staff room last year:

It actually hurts to read it. And the last part, with 'egg-tra' doesn't even work!

Luckily, the French language is not geared up to such painful punnery - 'oeufcellent' doesn't really work as well, does it? Much as I miss Creme Eggs, i'd quite happily do without them every year if it meant no puns.
And i'm not even yolking.

(Sorry.)

Orléans Part II

2010-04-03T16:34:00.007+01:00

After a delay, here's the much-anticipated final part of my trip to Orléans...

On the Saturday night, I went to a UV party in a manor house. And yes, it was as much fun as it sounds! The 'UV' element meant that we painted our faces with special paint, and danced around in a room which had UV lights all around the walls. I took a few photos, but they don't show up particularly well. This photo was taken by someone else, but i'm sure they won't mind!

I thought the man in the picture might mind, so he's been blanked out. You can still see how colourful the party was though.

The next morning, I went to the first annual 'Orleáns Chocolate Exhibition'. It seemed a bit assumptive to call it the 'first annual', as they had no idea if it was going to be popular or not. And, as it happens, it wasn't. You'd think a chocolate exhibition would include demonstrations, tasting, free samples, competitions and the like, but it was basically just a vast, empty chocolate shop. We stayed for about twenty minutes, then returned to the town centre.

The highlight: a Citroen 2CV. Made of chocolate. And why not?

It seemed to rain a lot when I was in Orléans, which somewhat hindered my outdoor adventures, but I still wandered around the streets a bit, admiring French architecture, cobbled streets, and overly-flowery flower shops.

A particularly damp road.

It almost looked like they had all spilled out of the shop and leaked onto the road. Still, it looked nice!

Countdown to England.

2010-04-03T15:46:00.007+01:00

As the last couple of weeks of teaching approach, it's dawned on me that I only have a few free days before I return to England. Worrying! To make the most of my remaining time here, I have wandered around taking pictures of anything and everything, as you're about to find out...

I bought these ingredients...

...cut them up...

...and made tomato, basil and mozzarella bruschettas.

I went into town today (a bad idea on a saturday), and saw this strange object in Place Royale. It appears to be a garden on a few metal poles, with balloons and propellers. I'm not entirely sure why it was there, but I think it was something to do with ecology, spring and gardening.

Las of all, I saw this poster at the tram stop a few days ago. It made me feel quite at home!

Bicloo.

2010-03-28T14:37:00.004+01:00

Nantes is roughly 300 miles south of Horsham. That's 300 miles closer to the equator. Thanks to this geographical position, Nantes is a lot warmer than England at this time of year. In the past week, it's been up to 20°c most days.

It made sense to make the most of the warm weather, so myself and another assistant hired Bicloos for the day. The 'Bicloo' system is a bike-sharing scheme, with a network of 'bike-stops' across the city which are available to hire. It only costs 1€ for the day, and you can go pretty much anywhere you want within the city. Best of all, it's actually exercise, and healthy!

Becky on her Bicloo. Taking this photo almost made me fall in the river.

We cycled around the Ile de Nantes, which is the big island in the River Loire home to th former shipbuilding yard. It's nice and flat, with virtually no traffic, so it's a perfect place to ride around!

The Ile de Nantes.

It took about two hours to go around the island. This convinced us that we were definitely entitled to eat vast quantities of unhealthy food, so we went to the nearest Subway and each had a huge sandwich.

I'll leave you with a few statistics:

You burn about 800 calories during two hours of cycling.
A 12" Subway sandwich contains about 700 calories.
Sitting quietly for two hours burns about 150 calories.

It would've been healthier to watch TV. Oops.

Unusual Events.

2010-03-26T11:40:00.006Z

Life in France is very different to that in England. I don't know why, but things that would seem odd or unusual in the UK seem pretty normal here.

Take yesterday, for example. I woke up, and went to school at 07h30, as per usual. However, when I got to school, there was a van outside. But not a normal van. This particular van had exploded a couple of hours earlier, leaving a smouldering shell outside the school. I have no idea if it was a bomb, a gas cylinder or petrol-related, but i'm pretty sure it's not normal?! Plenty of people were walking past, but no-one seemed to bat an eyelid.

The sorry-looking remains of the van.

Then yesterday evening, I went with a couple of other assistants to see 'Alice au Pays des Merveilles' (no prizes for guessing the translation). We just missed the tram on the way back, so decided to walk. Halfway home, we suddenly became aware that there were rougly 200 people on rollerblades up ahead, skating down the road complete with police escort, at 11 o'clock at night. No idea why. Again, a pretty weird event, but apparently normal for France...

The stragglers from the rollerblading rabble.

Three Weeks Left.

2010-03-25T09:20:00.003Z

It occurred to me today that i'm only in my schools for three more weeks. As I have some classes every other week, there's only one lesson left with some classes. I never thought i'd be saying this, but it actually makes me quite upset!

This morning, I had my 4ème€ class, who are my favourite pupils. It's almost like spending an hour with friends - we chat about anything, from how their week has been, to what they want to do when they visit England in May. They have no idea they're actually learning English at the same time. Sneaky, eh!

I'm actually really going to miss them when I leave. They came up with a cunning scheme to kidnap me when they're in England and take me back to France on the coach. I imagine it'll be the first time that immigration have ever caught a person in the hold of a coach trying to sneak out of England...

Orléans Part I

2010-03-23T08:41:00.004Z

As part of my mini cultural tour of nearby France, I visited a friend in Orléans last weekend. Orléans is a large town about 80 miles south of Paris, which is most famous for its various connections to Joan of Arc. If you don't know that before you get there, you certainly will when you leave. There is, in Orléans: a Joan of Arc House, a Joan of Arc statue, a Joan of Arc memorial, another Joan of Arc statue, a Joan of Arc café, and a Joan of Arc restaurant. You get the idea.

One of the Joan statues. Here she has a sword.

You can tell you've spent too much time in Nantes when trams are a tourist attraction.

My friend in Orléans is an English assistant in a nearby village called La Ferté Saint Aubin. On the Friday night, his school was putting on a dinner/concert in the village hall, so I went along to see it. How long does an average school concert last? An hour and a half? Two hours, maybe? Not in France. Seven hours. Seven. We didn't get home until 3am.

It was a strange set up, with the 40 pupils serving as waiters and performing the concert - those who weren't participating in a particular song would come out and bring the food to the audience while the others performed.

Some of the pupils were absolutely incredible at singing. There was one girl, who must've been about 15, but she had the most amazing voice i've ever heard. We sat on the teachers' table, so we got the inside information on various pupils who were performing. The incredible 15 year-old girl, who had the confidence to sing a solo in English, in front of 400 parents, is apparently too shy to put up her hand in lessons.

The evening was made up of a mixture of French songs, and English songs. Everything was covered, from Les Misérables, to Abba. There was even an hour-long rendition of the musical 'Wicked'. Every single word was learned off by heart, even down to the the dialogue between songs. How a 13 year-old cast can even sing in English, let alone off by heart, baffles me. It was a seriously impressive spectacle. It also made me want to become a music teacher in a French school. Now just the lack of musical skill and French to overcome first.

St. Patrick's Day.

2010-03-23T08:22:00.006Z

It's been over a week since I last updated this. Poor effort, I know, but i've simply been too busy! Luckily, the French have realised this, and hastily arranged a strike for today to let me catch up.

I'll start with St. Patrick's day. No, i'm not Irish, and I don't think I have a drop of Irish blood in me, but when there's an English-speaking celebration in France, I have to join in!

Now I don't know about Ireland, but in England, St. Patrick's day is a fairly understated day, where the pubs try to take advantage of people by putting green dye in their beer and charging them double. In nantes, St. Patrick is a major evening out. There's three 'Irish' pubs in Nantes, and we were going to wander around them and see which one had the best atmosphere. That was, until we saw this:

You'd never even know it's France.

John McByrne's was overflowing, with hundreds of people int he streets, and all the pubs in the area had brought out portable bars into the road. Irish music was being blasted out of the speakers, and everyone was having a generally good time.

Not a particularly good photo, but there were a troupe of bagipipers who marched throught the crowd at one point.

We stayed until about midninght, as I had a full day of teaching the next day. In the four hours that we were there, I met only one Irish person, and i'm pretty sure that he was putting the accent on himself. The only words he seemed to say were 'Guinness', 'Paddy' and 'potatoes'. Suspect.

La Baule.

2010-03-14T15:26:00.007Z

Normally in Nantes, it's either freezing cold, pouring with rain or a combination of the two. On Saturday, it was neither, so we decided to make the most of it and go on a trip to the coast.

'La Baule' is a small town which boasts the longest sandy beach in Europe. They're not joking when they say it's long, either. It's 12km long. As the average human walks at about 4km an hour, it'd take you three hours to walk from one end to the other. For Horsham people, that's like walking into town from my house six times, and still having a kilometre to go. It's a seriously long beach.

This photo was taken from about halfway along the beach. There's the same distance the other side.

I stole this from Google, who very nicely sent up a plane to show just how long the beach is.

It wasn't the sunniest of days, or even the warmest, but it was nice to escape busy Nantes for an afternoon and sample some town-life.
The not-particularly-summery weather didn't stop my seaside spirit, however, and I cautiously went for a paddle in the sea. My feet went blue, but it was worth it! I also built a small sandcastle, but couldn't find a bucket and spade shop, so had to make do using just my hands. it restricted my multi-storey castle dreams somewhat, but was still fun.

Sandcastles aside, the architecture in La Baule is very different to that of Nantes. Every other building seems to have a turret perched on the roof, making each house look like a miniature castle. I had a look in the local estate agents, and the average selling-price for such a house seems to be about 750,000€. Mini-chateaux don't come cheaply!

One of my future houses.

Even the station was in a nice building!

I plan to return to La Baule late in April, when the temperature's nearer 25°c, the sun's sunnier and the sea is less foot-numbing. And next time, with a proper bucket and spade.

Another week.

2010-03-12T14:58:00.004Z

Nothing out-of-the-ordinary has happened this week. It's the middle of the term, so the pupils are starting once again to become unruly. It's as though they forget how to misbehave in the holidays, and then gradually remember that it's what they do.

I forgot to mention - a few weeks back I tried frogs' legs for the first time. They tasted of garlic and oil, and were fiddly to eat. Also, the restaurant decided to add in some baby eels, so I had no idea which bit was which.

I have a few interesting bits and pieces to report. I use 'interesting' in the loosest sense of the word. You'll see...

Some French ambulances use the font 'Comic Sans MS' for the writing on the vehicle. It makes emergencies look like Year 8 geography worksheets.

This is the closest i've ever lived to traffic lights in my entire life. (Told you it was 'interesting'.)

Two days ago, I saw a man with a machine gun walking down the road. I think he was a plainclothes policeman. I hope he was.

One day ago, I saw a man sitting in a van with a shotgun. It was a Loomis (Securicor) van, but it still scared me into crossing the road.

I haven't seen a gun yet today.

I had an entire class of pupils who thought that 'boarding school' is where you learn to surf.

French pupils get excited when you say they can keep the Tube map. One put it on his wall.

A Very French Day.

2010-03-06T10:28:00.007Z

Yesterday was possibly the most French day of my life so far. Apologies in advance for the rambling nature of this post.

I awoke at the rather early time of 7am, and opened the curtains to find the sun peeping over the trees, sparkling onto a dew-encrusted spider web on the window. For breakfast, I made myself a couple of cheese-and-ham croissants, and ate them while watchin Télématin (the french version of BBC Breakfast).

Delicious, but probably/definitely bad for me.

I had only one lesson, with the 3euro, the best class in the school. We talked about films, and described film posters, while sneakily learning vocabulary along the lines of 'foreground', 'background', 'next to' and so on...
After my lesson, I ended up talking about French literature to one of the French teachers from my school. She was impressed that i'd read Sartre's 'Huis Clos'. I didn't tell her we were force-fed it at university, but managed to hold a fairly reasonable conversation nonetheless.

After such a strenuous day at work, I caught the tram, and helped an elderly lady carry her shopping trolley onto the tram. We then talked all the way back to my tram stop - she told me about her grandchildren, and the time when she visited London with her husband, which was in the 1960s. At my tram stop, I got off, and popped into the bread shop, where they knew what I wanted. I feel like a proper local now!

Flower in the shed!

I ate my lunch (tuna baguette) in my little garden - it's March 5th, and already outside dining! Oh, and my narcissus is flowering now too. Spring! In the afternoon, I wandered off to town. The temperature was 15C, and i've never seen the sky so blue! The town centre was bustling with people, many of them sitting outside cafés in the sun. I joined them, and had an ice cream which looked like a flower. It was delicious!

The vanilla ice cream

Ridiculously blue sky. Exciting photograph.

In the evening, I went to a party at another assistant's house, which is actually above a church. A bit of a bizarre location, but it was a good evening. We got there a bit early, so we went to a nearby bar beforehand. It turned out it was very much a bar for local people, and we got stared at by the seven people at the bar, until they found out we were English, and therefore 'interesting'. We spoke to a few of them for about half-an-hour, then went on to the party. There were people from all over the world at the party, and the most communal language was French, so I spoke a fair amount.

I got back tot he shed at 3am, and made myself a nice cup of tea. The day had been so French that I needed a nice cup of PG Tips to remind me i'm still English. I even drank it with my little finger stretched out.

No idea who this guy is, but he's kindly demonstrating my tea-drinking pose.

Year Abroad in Nantes help.

2010-03-04T12:07:00.004Z

I can see from the magical see-who's-looking-at-my-site program that there are a lot of people visiting this site after Googling 'Year abroad Nantes' or something along those lines.

If you're one of those people, I recommend going to this website:

www.assistantsinfrance.com

Ot has everything you need to know: what to pack, where to go, what to say etc., as well as a chance to talk to the other assistants who'll be in Nantes next year. Definitely worth a visit!

A bit of Londres.

2010-03-04T09:47:00.006Z

I know the title says 'Gavin's life in Nantes', but I thought i'd say a bit more about the holidays I spent in England.

I went for a midweek-weekend in London with Frida which included a We Are Scientists gig, and a snazzy hotel.

The hotel was the Wyndham Grand, in Chelsea. Being a 5-star hotel, it's normally about £500 a night, but they were refurbishing the gym and the restaurant, so we managed to get it vastly cheaper. We weren't planning on exercising or restauranting anyway, so it made no difference to us!

Frida relaxing in the lounge area

One of the TVs

Masses of marble

The hotel suite was the poshest i've ever seen. It was almost too extravagant, with two flat screens TVs, a bathroom with more marble than Lord Elgin, and a bed roughly the size of Belgium.

The We Are Scientists gig was in a tiny venue called The Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen. There were about 200 people there, and many of them seemed to be press or radio DJs, as the show was part-previewing their new album.

Before the show, Frida and I spied the singer sidling past the bar, so we went up, said hello, and got our photo taken with him.

A rather blurry, but vaguely-alright photo of the gig

Frida, Keith Murray and Me

The next day, I foolishly decided to accompany Frida to Oxford street. For those of you who do not know her particularly well, she likes to shop. A lot. Luckily, i'm quite good at moaning, so we eventually compromised and went shopping, but for coffee. Yum.

From a teaching point of view, visiting London is good, as it seems to be one of the pupils' favourite post-holiday question: "Deed you go London et see ze qween élizabette two? ". This time, I can actually say yes, and tell them all that the Queen is very well, thank you very much.

Back in Nantes, again,

2010-03-01T13:07:00.003Z

I've just returned to Nantes from my half-term holiday, which I spent in England. it was nice to be back in the country, and see various people who I haven't seen for a while.

Reading isn't exactly the nicest of places, by a long way, but it made a nice change from French life for a bit. I stayed with Frida, who lives in a studenty road near Reading University. It's a typical English-city area, clogged with cars, and with row upon row of identical brick-built houses.

Being in England also meant that I could do some good ol' English shopping. Sainsbury's garish orange bags have never looked so good. I thus returned with a strange assortment of food:

Dairy Milk chocolate
Hobnobs
Rich Tea biscuits
Twiglets
Mayonnaise
Mini Eggs
Fig Rolls
Nescafé Gold Blend

This looks like a reasonable list, except for the fact that I hardly ever eat any of these foods when i'm in England. I have no idea why I decided to buy them, but it temporarily makes my food cupboard look British, until the sneaky croissants start to take over again...

Fimo Fire.

2010-02-11T17:23:00.010Z

Evening entertainment is pretty limited in Nantes. There are the bars, of course, but neither my liver or my wallet benefit from going to bars night after night. So, myself and another assistant, Caitlin, came up with the thrilling idea of making buttons and other assorted objects from Fimo.

Fimo, for those who don't know, is a clay-like plastic-polymer, which comes in a variety of colours. We bought red, purple, glittery-blue and granite, and then started to make various things with the Fimo. I made a beer can, a guitar, an elephant, and and an assortment of buttons. Caitlin made a mermaid, rabbit, more buttons, a butterfly and a ladybird.

Here's the elephant, unicorn, hearts, buttons, mermaid, musical note and starfish, in happier times.

I was particularly happy with my replica of a beer can.

It said on the packet that we needed to bake them in the oven for 30 minutes in order for them to harden. So, sitting them on a baking tray, we slid them into Caitlin's mini-oven, turned it on, and went to sit at the kitchen table.

Caitlin puts the Fimo in the oven, mere minutes from disaster...

Barely five minutes later, I suddenly smelled smoke. Thinking they were just a little bit over-cooked, I went over to the oven to take them out. Upon opening the oven, flames leapt out and started to lick at the cupboard door, quickly filling the entire apartment with thick black smoke. We looked for a fire extinguisher, but, being France, there wasn't one. We unplugged the oven from the socket, and closed the door, hoping to starve it of oxygen and put it out. However, there was still plenty of air getting in through the vents at the side, keeping the fire steadily raging inside the oven, puffing out gallons of smoke.

By this point, Caitlin and I were hanging out of the window, trying not to breathe in the dense smoke, and gasping for air. The fire was showing no sign of getting smaller, so in one last effort before escaping, I mustered as much breath as I could, opened the oven, and blew. This actually put out the fire, while simultaneously blowing a thick cloud of sooty smoke right into my face.

The smoke slowly starting to disperse.

With the fire finally extinguished, we once again took to hanging out of the window, waiting for the smoke to disperse a bit before surveying the damage. After about ten minutes, we decided to extract the offending Fimo from the oven. Everything we'd made, everything we'd spent hours carefully crafting, was ruined. Not just over-cooked, not just burnt, but literally carbonised. We now have a variety of interestingly-shaped pieces of charred Fimo:

Next artistic endeavour? Charcoal drawing.

Trams and the Sillon.

2010-02-10T15:40:00.001Z

I recently seem to have developed a rather unhealthy interest in the Nantes Trams. I've never really been a huge fan of public transport as a rule - too expensive, too unreliable, too many strange people.

Then, I moved to France, and ecountered the TAN network. Sad as it may seem, I think it may be one of the things I miss most when I leave at the end of my year abroad. The Number 98 in Horsham just doesn't quite cut the mustard, i'm afraid...

There are three tramlines in Nantes, cleverly named Line One, Two and Three. There's also Line Four, which is not actually a tram, but a 'Busway'. Basically, a bus which wasn't cool enough to be a tram, but the other trams let him play anyway.

This is the basic map of the three lines:

I live on line three, by 'Longchamp', which i've marked in red on the map (blue line, top left). One of my schools is right by the other labelled stop, 'Sillon de Bretgane'. The word 'sillon' means 'furrow' in English, and so the stop translates roughly to something romantic about ancient ploughs and sweeping farmland. In reality though, this next photo is the 'Sillon de Bretagne' - a towering montrosity of 1960s council flats, and apparently one of the least desirable places to live in Nantes.

The Sillon de Bretagne - my school's tennis courts are the red blobs on the far left of the picture.

Needless to say, I didn't take this photo. Some of my younger pupils asked if i'm taller than the Sillon, but i'm not. Honestly.

La Cigale

2010-02-10T14:43:00.005Z

I don't think i've ever gone out specifically for breakfast before. It's just one of those meals which is best had in the comfort of your own home. That is, unless you happen to live in Nantes, in which there is a much better location: La Cigale.

The front entrance to the brasserie

'La Cigale' is an art-nouveau brasserie which dates from 1895. As far as I could tell from the interior, it's barely changed in the last 115 years. There are frescoes on the ceilings, extravagantly-tiled walls, and the biggest mirror i've ever seen in my life. The decor, combined with the smartly-clad waiters makes you feel as though you've just stepped into the late 1800s.

Well-dressed waiter just walking out of shot...

The word 'Cigale' is French for 'cricket', and the ornate tiles are appropriately, but subtly based around the insects. It felt a bit silly taking photos inside a restaurant, but I managed to get a few before people started to look at me strangely...

A close-up of some of the tiles that were on every single wall

The breakfast itself was pretty good. I had a croissant, a pain au chocolat, two pieces of toast (accompanied with apple compote, caramel and marmalade), coffee and freshly-squished orange juice. Delicious!

Tram Characters

2010-02-04T19:35:00.004Z

So, the famous trams. I spend at least 30 minutes a day on these things, just as a basic commute. This gives me ample time to people-watch. And i've proudly come to the conclusion that there are six different types of tram-people:

The Drunk
This person, typically male, lounges across at least two seats, reeking of stale alcohol, and staring vacantly at the window. Not at the view out of the window, but the window itself, resulting in a strange, hazy expression. His pockets can often be heard clinking.

The Homeless Man
He walks down the tram, mournfully holding out a hand, earnestly asking if anyone can spare a few centimes. When people politely decline, as they invariably do, the Homeless Man moves solemnly on to the next person. Might be more effective if he didn't do it every single day. Anyway, if he spent less money on tram tickets/fines, and more on housing, he'd probably be a bit better off.

The Pushchair-wielding Mother
Yes, you have a pushchair twice the width of the aisle. No, it most definitely won't fit. Oh, you're going to try anyway? That was my foot.

The Old Lady with Shopping
She gets on at Orvault-Morliere, with more shopping bags than she can sensibly expect to carry. As the tram corners just before Bignon, the bags topple over, unleashing an array of conveniently circular groceries onto the tram floor. Old-Lady-with-Shopping then proceeds to gather up the escapee vegetables, tins and bottles from the floor, and puts them back into her bag just in time for her stop, Plaisance.

The Teenager with Music
This young man is on every single tram, on every single line, all day, every day. His mobile phone has some microscopic speaker which is capable of blaring out music at an surprisingly loud, yet low-quality level. He somehow remains completely oblivious to the fact that his pocket is making such a horrendous noise and defiantly out-stares anyone who even thinks about making eye-contact with him.

The First-time Tram-ers
This is a couple who quite possibly live in a little village near Nantes. They are therefore completely befuddled by anything remotely tram-related. This unfortunately includes doors, tickets, seats, holding-on, getting-off. For this reason, the First-time Trammers often get off at the wrong stop, after falling over, losing their ticket and puzzling over the tram map. Even then, they can't open the door.

Day in Angers

2010-02-01T07:18:00.007Z

In 845, the Vikings invaded Angers.
In 1204 Angers was conquered by King Philippe II.
In 1585, the Huguenots invaded.

Then, more importantly, in 2010, Angers was invaded by three assistants from Nantes. One of whom was so enthusiastic that she convinced us to get the 09h55 train. On a Saturday! Grr.

It took just over half an hour to get there on the TGV, which is pretty reasonable. Google maps kindly informs me that it would have taken 19 hours to walk. The enthusiastic assistant had already thoroughly researched the town, and had made a military-style itinerary of the day's events.

We started off with a walk around the town centre, and crossed the River Maine. The view on the postcards in the shops looked spectacular, with a sweeping panorama of castles, churches and luxuriously green trees, bathed in rich sunshine. In reality, it was not quite so picturesque, due to it being winter, cold, half-cloudy, and a huge tarpaulin covering most of the castle.

For lunch, we had galettes at a creperie. I don't think i've mentioned these galettes yet, so i'll explain. They're a traditional Breton food - 'Breton' being from Brittany, the region of France where Nantes used to be. Basically, it's like a savoury crepe, which typically contains ham, cheese and an egg, but you can choose pretty much anything you want to go in them. Here's a photo of one:

For my dessert, I had three different kinds of sorbet - lime, passionfruit and Cointreau. The latter comes from Angers, so it felt appropriate to try some while I was there.

In the afternoon, we wandered down to the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin, which is the oldest church in Angers. It doesn't sound like much of an accolade, but there must've been well over 50 churches in the town. The foundations of the Collegiate church dated from the fifth century, with every layer above being built a few centuries later. Lazy French builders, I reckon. Click on photo for a better view.

Later on we went to visit the castle. It's an fairly imposing example of a castle, and is seen by guidebooks as the first of the proper 'Loire Valley Chateaux'. It houses the 'world's longest' tapestry - or the 'Apocalypse', as they call it. It's basically a cartoon strip of the book of revelations, but with a liberal helping of seven-headed dragons. I'm no biblical expert, but i'm sure dragons are fairly limited within its pages. We weren't allowed to take photos of the tapestry. I think this is partly because the flash would spoil the fabric, and partly because people would then expose it for the con it actually is. Longest tapestry, maybe. But, they'd chopped it up into sections which were a maximum of 30 feet long. There must be some tapestry-world loophole regarding cutting them up that I don't know about.

Slightly disconcerting sign - 'Apocalypse, this way'

The castle had some impressive gardens too, and the view from the top of the tower was suitably panoramic. it was trying to snow while we were on the tower, so it was perishing cold. My cold, shivering hands tried to take many photos, but swiftly decided to retreat into my pockets before frostbite settled in.

The gardens:

Freezing-cold view from the castle across the river and, unfortunately, dual-carraigeway. French town-planning doesn't take into account nice views, apparently:

The last two photos aren't entirely relevant, but I quite liked them. One is typically French, one is typically English. I wish i'd been able to get them in the same photo, but i'm not sure that 2CV drivers take kindly to being asked to pose in front of 'phone boxes. Still, here they are:

Muse-indoctrination.

2010-01-29T14:19:00.004Z

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.

2010-01-28T19:50:00.004Z

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

2010-01-24T16:42:00.006Z

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?

2010-01-22T09:33:00.004Z

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.

2010-01-21T21:51:00.012Z

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.

2010-01-15T07:05:00.005Z

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.

2010-01-09T16:07:00.008Z

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.

2010-01-09T11:10:00.004Z

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.

2010-01-05T21:04:00.002Z

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

2010-01-03T12:56:00.012Z

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.

Sweden in December.

2009-12-30T10:08:00.008Z

I've been rather quiet on here recently. Christmas happened, which meant I was preoccupied with present-opening, cake-eating and other assorted festivities. Oh, and I type this from a shiny new laptop. Finally!

I spent the first week of the holidays in Sweden, which was good. It was weird going from one foreign country to another, but it was nice to escape France for a bit. Getting across Paris in the snow was an experience, but it was quite nice to see the Eiffel Tower in the snow.

I arrived in Stockholm on the 18th and stayed until the 24th. Not a long time, but still enough to see Frida's family, friends and relatives. We made a gingerbread igloo, leaped around in the snow and ate vast quantities of dill-flavoured crisps.

The gingerbread igloo, painstakingly glued together by Frida and I. There definitely isn't a bowl hidden inside to keep it standing:

A photo of Frida's back garden. Ridiculously picturesque; ridiculously cold (looks much better once clicked on):

Frida in the Christmas market in Stockholm. Better than the Nantes market by far, as it actually felt christmassy. The two feet of snow may've helped:

An inquisitive Swedish deer:

Fleeing France.

2009-12-18T17:14:00.004Z

Interestingly enough, the last five posts on this blog have been from five different computers:

My laptop
Collège Gutenberg computer
Collège Anne de Bretagne computer
Internet café computer
Charles de Gaulle airport computer

At one of these places, some virus-y thing managed to get into my emails and recommend a variety of interesting-looking health remedies to all of my contacts. if you got one, apologies! Alternatively, you could actually invest in the remedy 'I' recommended - it might work!

My flight leaves in just over an hour, I hope. This terminal is not the prettiest place in the world, so it'll be nice to leave:

If all goes well, the next time I write on here will be from Sweden (and another different computer), when i'll hopefully have something more than computer woes to recount.

Stupid strikes.

2009-12-16T16:16:00.005Z

I am in an internet café today, so it's going to be a short post. But, an informative one.

Strikes are fun when you're participating, but not when you're on the other side.

In two days I leave Nantes, to go to Stockholm. Slight problems though. My TGV arrives at Paris Montparnasse, but my flight to Sweden leaves from Paris Charles de Gaulle. Normally, i'd have to take the RER train across Paris. But, there's curently a strike, so i'd usually just have to take the Metro instead. However, there's another strike on the Metro, so i'll have to get a taxi. Or, if they too have by then decided to have a spontaneous strike, i'll have to walk. All the way across Paris. With a huge heavy suitcase. Grr.

To throw another spanner into the works, I see on the BBC website that there's a cabin-crew strike planned by British Airways staff, rendering 90% of flights cancelled or delayed for 12 days over Christmas. Twelve days into which my return-to-England-in-time-for-Christmas flight falls. So, apparently I might be spending Christmas in Sweden too. We'll see.

On the plus side, there is snow forecast for Nantes, Stockholm and Horsham. I'm fairly sure that due to my country-hopping, i'll miss all three, but again, we'll see.

Computer Update.

2009-12-10T08:50:00.004Z

So, an update on the computer situation. It's still dead, and there doesn't seem to be any imminent revival on the horizon. This is problematic for a number of reasons:

My bank card is only going to be activated and sent to me once i've uploaded a photo of myself onto the bank's website, which I now can't do. I'm reluctant to use a public computer, as some sneaky French man will probably steal my password, PIN, then money. Not good. Basically, I won't get my French bank card until about February. I leave in April. Hmm.

Also, the generic lesson for the next couple of weeks was the classic 'Christmas wordsearch', which was to be found on the internet, and I also can't talk to anyone on Skype, rendering me completely cut off from the world.

I'm typing this in the CDI at my Thursday-and-Friday school. The CDI's basically a library, but with less books, less computers, and more chairs. Facebook is blocked here. Upsetting stuff! It doesn't help that the keyboard is all messed up and French too, so I keep typing Qs instead of As.

Basically, I miss my computer. I'm probably a bit too reliant on it, to be honest. What did people do before the internet?! I might have to read one of those 'book' things, or even talk to someone in real life. Frightening!

Death of a computer.

2009-12-08T13:31:00.001Z

The laptop has died - i'm writing this from the staff room in one of my schools. There won't be many updates until Christmas now. Useless technology.

St. Nazaire. Avoid.

2009-12-06T14:21:00.008Z

The weather forecast for yesterday was 20% chance of rain. For Nantes, that's as close as it gets to a dry day so we decided to venture to the beach. The nearest coastal town to Nantes is St. Nazaire, so we met at the Gare SNCF and hopped on a train towards the sea.

The rolling-screen on the train informed us that we'd be arriving in St. Nazaire at 12h57. We looked out the window and saw: a sewage works, an oil refinery, gasworks, a motorway and a nuclear power station. Looking at my phone, I saw the time was 12:57. Welcome to St. Nazaire:

Firstly, the 20% chance of rain forecast was a lie. It drizzled for almost the whole day. Walking towards the beach was cold, damp and miserable. The scenic route to the coast went through an industrial estate, past a derelict supermarket and a demolition site. When we finally arrived at the sweeping sandy beach this was the sight/site that greeted us:

Not a single person on the beach, howling wind, driving rain, and not even any cosy seafront cafés to hide in. Just a vast, miserable expanse of grey.

After the disappointment of the beach, we headed towards the town centre. Which, again, was dreary and dreadful. There was a whole row of funeral directors and stonemasons (every sign you can see in the photo is a funeral directors, except for the Axa one - life insurance):

We did eventually find a relatively-new shopping centre, but it was just the chains which seem to be in every town in France, and they've all got branches in Nantes anyway. The highlight of the whole trip was seeing the Airbus boat, which they use to transport the fuselage sections of the A380 from Germany to France. The factory in St. Nazaire makes further parts of the fuselage, before it gets shipped down to Toulouse where it al gets pieced together. Think Airfix, but on a much grander scale.

To summarise, never go to St. Nazaire. I will be actively avoiding it for the rest of my life, and urge other people to do the same.

Christmas Market.

2009-12-04T16:19:00.004Z

Yesterday evening, I met up with some other assistants (three Welsh, one English, one American), and went to the Nantes Christmas Market. It looked really festive, with lights, tinsel, christmas trees and fake snow in every direction. It's basically row upon row of wooden sheds, with people selling their stuff from the window. The music coming out of all the speakers sounded like they might have borrowed my MP3 player though - Muse, then Kasabian followed by Scarlett Johansson. Not festive, but nice nonetheless...!

There are actually two markets in the town centre - one in Place du Commerce, near Fnac (the CD shop/HMV place) and one in Place Royale, where there's usually just a fountain and a pavement artist.

We each got a cup of steaming mulled wine and wandered around, looking at all the overpriced things for sale. Monopoly for 50€, a little wooden giraffe for 25€. I assume it's aimed at tourists, even though they don't seem to be very common in Nantes. Here's a bunch of pictures of the markets. It's quite hard to take decent pictures outside in the dark, but I managed to get a few half-decent ones:

(again, clicking on the photos makes them look a bit better)

Noël á Nantes.

2009-12-02T19:20:00.009Z

Regent Street tries its best, but has no hope of matching the festivities that can be found in a certain little shed on Rue des Friches, Nantes.

Firstly, there's the tree. The label in the shop reliably informed me that it was a five-foot tree for 5.50€. Upon getting it home, however, and eagerly opening the box, it turned out to be about two feet tall. I assembled it and put it on the floor, where it's flimsy branches barely reached my knee. Pathetic. Luckily, with a bit of straggly tinsel, some lights and some deceptive photography, it doesn't look too bad: (the pictures all look better if you click on them)

I found these little fellows in Ikea. They're amazing. I think they're made from wool and stuffed with something or other. I bought a pack of ten of them, and hung them all over the tree, where they all look very content and snuggly among the branches:

On the wall opposite the tree, there's the shelving unit which has been adorned with more tinsel and lights. Battery powered lights from Wilkinson's in Horsham, at that. They only cost £1.99 - bargain! The trouble is, all the lights are LED things, so when you turn off the proper ceiling light, you can't see a thing. Christmas is all a bit impractical, really.

The Christmas lights and markets are all up-and-running in the centre of Nantes now. I'm going into the centre tomorrow night to see them, and will be sipping mulled wine in the (fake) snow to the sound of an accordion... Couldn't do that in Regent Street.

School days.

2009-11-30T18:00:00.004Z

You may've noticed that I don't really mention the teaching on here a lot. Admittedly, it's what i'm here to do, but it's always pretty similar. I'll be starting Christmas lessons soon though which'll make a change. Until then, however, the anecdotes from the schools are pretty thin on the ground. One interesting one, however:

The younger pupils have decided that it is no longer sufficient to say 'Good morneeng, Gaveen' whenever they see me. They've gradually moved onto an interesting variety of other English greetings, such as 'What is your favourite season?' or 'Where is London?'. They say these things as they're running past, so I rarely have time to answer. This morning, I was greeted by one eleven-year old who proudly proclaimed 'My favoureet colour is green, but I preefer red." Good for you.

This is the school I teach in on Mondays and Tuesdays - Collège Anne de Bretagne:

This is the Thursday and Friday school - Collège Gutenberg:

Art Gallery

2009-11-25T17:22:00.003Z

Today, as part of a 'cultural day', I went to visit the 'Musée des Beaux Arts' in Nantes. Basically, an art gallery. It was surprisingly big, and they had a few artists I actually knew, like Kandinsky, Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Rodin and Renoir.

The museum itself, as you can see from the staircase photo, is pretty grand. And, as it was Wednesday lunchtime, it was quite empty.

My favourite painting was one by Picasso, but I also liked this next one. I'm not even sure what's going on in it, but it made a nice change from the Renaissance works:

I've decided, however, that a lot of art is overrated. Water lilies are all very nice and everything, but was it really necessary to paint them 250 times, Claude?! And the record price for a Monet Water Lillies is £41,000,000. Too, much, I reckon. Especially when there's still 249 others knocking around, and you can buy a full-size print in the museum shop for 15€.

Striker.

2009-11-24T15:22:00.004Z

Today, I took part in an age-old French tradition, and went on strike. Instead of the five hours which I was meant to teach, I did one. For the rest of the day, I read the paper, had lunch and drank coffee, and other assorted strike-y things.

I'm not sure why I was striking, either. The local paper tells me it was against the gradual erosion of public services and the change in Lycée (sixth form) regulations. But, I think it was simply due to the fact that they haven't had one for a few months, and felt today was a reasonable day to do it.

Real-life internet.

2009-11-23T19:09:00.003Z

On the 12th July 2009, I posted this on here. I'd simply searched for 'Saint Herblain' on Google, and copied across one of the first photos that had appeared.

On the 21st November 2009, I was sitting on the tram, on line two, going towards the 'Francois Mitterand' tram stop. I looked out of the window, and there was the same sign, accompanied by the same block of flats and same ominous CCTV warning.

How satisying.

Le Violon Dingue

2009-11-23T08:04:00.004Z

Yesterday, being Sunday, is generally a pretty quiet day in Nantes, and France in general. Literally everything is shut. Shops, banks, museums, newsagents. Even a lot of the boulangeries close.

However, in the evening, the bars in the town centre open up. So, I decided to be adventurous and went to a small bar/music venue called 'Le Violon Dingue'. A small band called Rivari'cha were playing there. They describe themselves as Acoustic/Swing/Rock, which seems fairly accurate. There were five of them in total - two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer and a violinist.

They all seemed to be part of the same family and had, as Caitlin (another assistant) put it, the 'family nose'. Not a particularly spectacular proboscis, but they all had it. If, by this point, you're convinced you want to hear Rivari'chi, you can find them at this link.

Here's some pictures from the gig. We were pretty much at the back - there must've been a maximum of 30 people there. The photos are blurred, but it gives a vague sense of what it was like. I think you can click on the second one to make it bigger and all panoramic.

Food á la France.

2009-11-22T13:32:00.006Z

In my 'shed', there's only a microwave and two electric hobs. No toaster, no kettle, but more importantly, NO OVEN. So, i've had to resort to making food that's not oven based for the last month. Underneath are a few examples.

Some of them tasted better than they looked.
Most of them looked better than they tasted.

This first one is ostrich. Yep, ostrich. I found a section in Auchan, the nearest supermarket, which has strange meats from around the world. Ostrich tastes similar to beef - I had mine well-done, as it was a thick piece, and I didn't fancy getting ostrich-poisoning... This was actually the second ostrich meal I had - the first was with baked beans, which went surprisingly well with it.

This next meal is pork in a roquefort sauce. Pork seems to be the cheapest meat here, so i've been eating a fair amount of it. Sorry, pigs.

These are authentic Swedish meatballs, from Ikea. The Ikea in Nantes is pretty close to both of my schools, so I can pop in on the way home and get interesting Swedish food. My kitchen currently contains: dillsill, kottbullar, salt sill, djungelvral, lingonsylt, lingonsaft och senap. For you non-Swedes, that's rollmops, meatballs, licorice, licorice monkeys, linonberry sauce, lingonberry juice and mustard. Probably won't use them all in the same meal.

This last meal is a good, old-fashioned steak. I made the chips on the hob, but had to keep juggling everything around to cook it all. There's two hobs, but they're so close together that you can't really fit two pans on at the same time. Useless, really...

Anyway, one of the main points of this was to show Mum and Dad that i'm actually eating healthily. Look, Mum - Brussels' sprouts, broccoli, carrots, potatoes, and salad. Healthy Gavin.

To-do List.

2009-11-19T20:55:00.004Z

So, i've been in Nantes for almost two months. It feels like a lot longer, which is odd. Also, I went home for a week, so i've only really been here for a few days!

Anyhow, there's still a lot of things I need to visit here. The trouble is, as I live here, I keep thinking I 'can do it another day'. It's probably the same with London, though, I imagine there's a fair few Londoners who've never been on the London Eye, for example!

So, these are on my to-do list:

La Cigale - a Brasserie which has been described by Jean-Louis Trintignant as "perhaps the most beautiful brasserie in the world." I'm not entirely sure who he is, but it's not a bad recommendation regardless.

This is the main castle in Nantes - Le Château des Ducs de Bretagne. I've walked past it countless times, but I am still yet to explore the museum inside. Apparently it's well-worth a visit.

This last picture is a place that i've visted a lot, but I thought it was a nice photo, so i'd put it on here anyway. The square's called Place Royale, and there's this fountain in the middle. Apparently there'll be some kind of Christmas market there soon, but it's still a bit early. They celebrate Christmas in December here, and not August, like England seems to.

I didn't take any of these photos, i'm afraid. When I visit the place in question, i'll take some and put them on here.

France vs. Ireland

2009-11-19T20:43:00.002Z

Last night, I went to an Irish bar in the centre of Nantes to watch the World Cup qualifier. I wasn't entirely sure what was going on at first, but it seemed that France needed to win the game to get into the World Cup in 2010.

So, when Ireland scored, things were not looking good for Les Bleus. At 90 minutes, the game was somehow equal (based on aggregate over two 'legs'), so it went into extra time. Then eventually, France scored, and went on to draw the match at 1-1.

Then, the bar erupted; France had apparently qualified for the World Cup. Cue extravagant French-style celebrations: anything from people hanging out of car windows with flags to people perched on the roof of cars clinging onto the roof-rack, frantically shouting and brandishing an oversized French flag.

Parnassus.

2009-11-15T10:26:00.003Z

I went to the cinema in the centre of Nantes yesterday, to see a film called 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'. It was in English, but with French subtitles. Ssh, i'm allowed an occasional English indulgence.

It's an very odd film, based loosely around the idea that the Doctor has a travelling sideshow that can channel peoples dreams. Anyway, there's a lot of strange dream-sequences, interspersed with extremely 'normal' situations. In one scene, for example, the sideshow pulls up into the carpark of Homebase before one of the dream-trips, which is a pretty strange juxtapostion of everyday life and crazy-fantasy.

I'm no film critic, but I liked it. Some of the jokes seem to be lost on the French, however, as the subtitles couldn't translate the humour. It's always interesting reading the sous-titres when you know what's actually being said in both languages. One example was when the phrase "sure as eggs is eggs" was used. The French equivelant was "sure as 2 + 2 = 4".

After the film I went and had a Thai meal - chicken with ginger. It was delicious, until I realised it tasted the same as a gingerbread man, which then put me off slightly. I then went home and watched the Ireland v. France football match on TV. And supported Ireland.

All in all, not a very 'French' day.

Jardin des Plantes.

2009-11-08T10:46:00.005Z

Surprisingly for November, the weather in Nantes was quite nice yesterday. I was wondering around the town centre in short-sleeves, which I doubt you could do in England... (I was a bit cold, to be honest. Still, it wasn't freezing).

I met a few of the other assistants, and we went to see the Jardin Des Plantes The. literal meaning is 'Garden of Plants', which you'd think would be obvious, really. You wouldn't go to the 'Café of Drinks' or the 'Zoo of Animals', would you...?

Anyway, it was a pretty nice place, which seemed to be slightly English-themed. There was a small palm-house which loked suspiciously similar to the one at Kew. Thieving French gardeners.

There were some deer in one corner of the garden, and some ducks sitting in the pond in the middle. There were a few waterfalls as well, one of which you could walk behind. I was half-expecting some Enid Blyton-style secret passages behind the waterfall, but there were none. Disappointing; I quite fancied catching a few smugglers.

The view across the pond to the waterfall.

The palm house.

View from behind the waterfall.

House? Flat? Studio? ...Shed.

2009-11-06T14:43:00.005Z

I've finally moved into my new house. It's not really much of a house, to be honest. Still, it has a roof and four walls, so I can't really complain. It's near the Longchamp tram stop, if you know Nantes. And, if you don't, here's a convenient map:

(for the less-technological people, you can zoom in and out of my house by clicking on the - or + buttons on the left. It should automatically find my road)

View my road in a larger map if this one is too small!

The interior is fairly basic. The mini-plan thing I posted here last month is surprisingly accurate, actually. Everything works, including the heater, which is nice, as there was a frost this morning. Underneath are some photos of various corners of the house.

iHalloween

2009-11-06T14:16:00.005Z

So, firstly, apologies for lack-of-updates recently. I've been a busy man, running all over the world.

Last week was the Toussaints holiday. It's like the English half-term, but a few days longer. I decided to trek back to England for a few days. I started off with a few days in Reading, then visited Louisa (my sister) in Oxford, before going up to Leamington Spa to see my friends from Horsham. Then, eventually I returned to Horsham for a couple of days to see Mum, Dad and Ross (my brother).

Halloween was during my Reading stint of the holidays. So, in true-student form, I dressed up to go to the Students' Union. Frida and I figured that most scary costumes would be covered - my friends were going as devils, zombie, mummies, witches etc.

In a stroke of genius/insanity, Frida came up with the idea of dressing as iPod headphones. Yep, these:

Using lampshades, old Primark t-shirts and Frida's sewing-machine skills, we came up with a pretty good attempt at headphones:

The only slight problem now is that I will undoubtedly have to recount my Halloween experiences to various pupils in my class. They'll either think that i'm completely insane or that everyone in England dresses up strangely on October 31st.

I think i'll go with the latter.

Chez Moi

2009-10-19T12:19:00.003+01:00

So, I finally have my own place to live! I wouldn’t call it a house. Or even really a flat. Almost like an annexe, I think. It used to be a garage, but the family converted it to a mini-studio.

I only looked around it for about five minutes before agreeing to have it. But, from what I could remember, it seemed pretty nice!

It has a mezzanine double bed thing. Basically a bunk bed, but built-in to the house. Underneath is a wardrobe and bookshelves and a desk. I think. There was definitely wood there, anyway.

A TV with proper signal and a DVD player. Always good.

A mini-garden. I can plant plenty of flowers and make the view from the windows all pretty.

A front door. My own front door. I’ll bring out the French handwriting and put ‘M. Gavin GREENE’ on a little label.

A kitchenette. ‘Ette’ being a key part of the word. From what I could remember, there were two hob-rings, a sink, fridge and cupboard. Oh, and a microwave. Notice the lack of oven. Can you cook a pizza on the hob?

The bathroom is pretty small, but has a shower in one corner, then a sink and a toilet in the other corners. Small, but good enough.

It has WiFi too. Which means I can finally catch up on various programmes that I’ve missed.

Once I’ve moved in (on Wednesday evening) I’ll take some photos and put them on here. Until then, the drawing at the top of the page will have to suffice.

Crazy French Farmers...

2009-10-17T08:46:00.005+01:00

The centre of town was rather busy today. Though not with commuters. Instead, there were 315 tractors, 5000 farmers, and numerous blazing piles of hay. I think that photographs are far more apt at conveying the extent of the protest, so i'll leave it to them.

Oh, and I think they were protesting about milk and lack of money for farmers, but you couldn't see the banners due to the smoke. Counterproductive farmers...

Trop de Leffe.

2009-10-15T18:55:00.002+01:00

A couple of nights ago, I went to a bar in the Quartier Bouffay, which is the area between the Cathedral and the Castle. Not a place you’d generally expect there to be much trouble…

We were innocently sitting outside a bar, when a drunk guy (who we shall name Pierre) stumbled over to us, asking for a lighter. Another assistant, Ceri, willingly obliged, and handed his over. Pierre clumsily lit his cigarette, returned the lighter, and then promptly sneezed, launching the freshly-lit cigarette from his mouth. Not a good start.

Ten minutes passed before Pierre came over again, once more demanding a lighter. This time, however, it seemed that the large amounts of Leffe had hindered his manners, and he started to get louder and aggressive. (I think it was aggressive, anyway. My French-understanding is still somewhat lacking. It was definitely louder.)

The barman thus decided that Pierre had enough, and it was probably time for him to go to bed. Pierre, however, seemed to have other ideas, and started to get more and more agitated. I’m told there was a head butt involved, but I didn’t get to see that bit. Shame.

The next thing we knew, there was a squad of police marching down the road towards the café. Bear in mind Pierre was just one guy. The first ‘wave’ of police officers grabbed him, and pulled him away from the doorway, deciding it was easiest to hold him by his throat. The second ‘wave’ then turned up (another five officers), to stand around and generally look threatening. Before poor old Pierre could tell what was happening, he was frogmarched down the road, off to spend a night in the cells.

All in all, quite an exciting evening. I even found a pint of beer for 4,70€. Bargain…

Je voudrais une wétherspoons á Nantes, svp.
(Interestingly enough, spell-check just informed me that ‘wétherspoons’ is feminine.)

DISCLAIMER: For any worried mothers, fathers or siblings reading this, I was not in any danger at any time. I’m being sensible, honest!

Fin de Semaine.

2009-10-09T12:10:00.003+01:00

Another week is over at school. I feel so sorry for all my teachers from secondary school now! All that time I thought they were just trying to ruin my day, they were actually trying to teach me...! I guess the clue was in their title: teachers.

A lot of the people from my classes have started to add me on Facebook, so they've all been thrown into the 'Limited Profile' section. Can't have a bunch of 15 year olds knowing too much about me. Although now they have a major advantage for their 'write-a-paragraph-about-Gavin' homework.

I wandered around the nearest supermarket today, 'Auchan'. They had live crabs and live crayfish. One particularly adventurous crayfish fell off the counter, and scuttled underneath. Clever little creature. Though he'll just die in a different place; I doubt his new-found freedom will bring longevity.

I've also just booked my Eurostar tickets to return to England over half term. They cost £180! No wonder France's economy is doing well at the moment - i'm singlehandedly keeping it going. I'm back from 24th October - 3rd November, which nicely includes Hallowe'en.

I'm not sure of this year's outfit yet, though. Hopefully something delightfully impractical. Though not racist, like last year's attempt. 'Bats' was a good idea to begin with, but in practice was just a little bit difficult. And wandering around Leamington Spa with 'blacked-up' faces was always going to be a bad idea...

Almost done a week...

2009-10-04T20:56:00.003+01:00

This time a week ago, the ferry was just going past the Spinnaker tower in Portsmouth, and I was happily eating squashed sandwiches with Dad. Quite a change in a mere six days!

French observations:

There is no bell in my school - just the first four-and-a-half seconds of the New World Symphony by Dvorak.

People do not drive on the right in France - they drive wherever they want.

A pint of beer can cost up to 6€ - no wonder there's no binge drinking.

I must look very English - before I open my mouth, people say 'Hello'.

Many a French man's idea of romance is creepily sidling up to a girl at a bus stop and grabbing her.

Everything is about three years behind England - phones, computers, technology.

Anything important is done at a casual speed. Generally, the more important something is, the longer it takes to do. Examples of this include: Renting appartments, serving in a restaurant and driving an emergency vehicle (often done with a casual cigarette in-mouth, while looking at girls on the nearest pavement).

Jusqu'ici tout va bien...

2009-10-03T09:43:00.003+01:00

I did another day of teaching yesterday, which went much more smoothly, which was a relief! I had the cutest-ever 6eme class (year seven in England), and we spent the lesson making speech-bubbles with classroom phrases in them, which then were stuck around the board.

I am now the proud owner of a French bank account, with Crédit Lyonnais. It did, however, take 2 hours to complete all the paperwork. Complex banking-language was NOT part of ny language lessons in Reading!

I am off to the centre of Nantes soon, to meet some other assistants by the castle. It will be nice to see a bunch of people who are in the same boat as me - we can compare notes on teaching, if nothing else!

First Day of School.

2009-10-01T18:05:00.003+01:00

Wow. I didn't expect that.

I woke up at 7am, and went down to the school for 8am, where I met the Prinipal, and hundreds of teachers; Then, at 8:20, my first lesson started. I stood at the front of the class for an hour, under a barrage of questions about England:

"Do you have aneee bruzzer or seester?"
"Where is 'Orsham?"
"Do you like ze Twilight storieez?"

It all went fairly smoothly, and I managed to pretend I like Twilight, so the female contingent in the class now like me. I hope.

The next class was the same format, but with a slightly lower standard of English, which meant I had to whip out the 'louder-and-slower' card, which worked very nicely. Although one pupil asked me if I am Homer Simpson. Slightly disconcerting; maybe I have jaundice?

I then had lunch, which was a very nice Italian-themed meal, complete with Italian music, flags and propaganda. From the outside, it may've looked a bit like a far-right Italian rally, but never mind.

After lunch, however, the fun really began. Take some Cornish Pixies, 25 tired fourteen-year-olds, and add them together for an hour, and you get an interesting outcome. Oh, and I was on my own. Conpletely. EEK!

I resorted to playing a bit of hangman, and asking them questions in English, but it's amazing how slowly an hour goes when you have a classful of bored stdents seeking entertainment. They were loud, but with a carefully placed 'Silence!' and the occasional 'Sssshh!', they seemed to enjoy the class, and maybe even understood why the pixies were in Cornwall. I, however, am still none the wiser.

Now i'm back in the haven of the English-teacher's house (and ,ine for the forseeable future), and it's much more relaxing. I feel exactly like the teacher in that film, The Chorus. Except with less singing. And worse-behaved pupils.

Strangely though, given the situation, I don't feel like running home yet. I reckon that with a bit of time and effort, the classes will be manageable and fun. I just hope I have le temps et l'effort!!

Premier Jour.

2009-09-29T22:31:00.002+01:00

My first day in a new city!

I woke up at 07h00 (6am, in England) and got the tram into the centre of Nantes; where everything was closed except for a tiny little café near to a petrol station. I had a coffee and a pain au chocolat, then set to wandering around Nantes for the day.

As i'm still on a pathetic AZERTY keyboard, i'll leave the exciting bits for later, but here's a few (stolen) photos of the sights that I saw in Nantes today...

First Day.

2009-09-28T22:19:00.002+01:00

So, I arrived.

I'm currently siting in a French living room, surrounded by French furniture, on a French computer, after having French wine withe a French meal. The first DVD I see on the shelf? 'This Is England'. Oh, the irony...

The English teacher i'm living with this week is very friendly and welcoming, and her house is nice. My room here is bigger than my room in Horsham and Reading put together!

I'm meeting other Assistants in Nantes tomorrow, which will be nice. Hopefully i'll be able to upload some photos when I am on my laptop. French keyboards are seriously messed up!

Not long now...

2009-09-27T12:36:00.005+01:00

So far, packing has been fairly unsuccessful. Fortunately, I already have all the essentials.

Dictionary
Map
Money
Fluffy kiwi
Muse
Badge
Harmonica
Bottle opener

I reckon I could live for a year with that lot. Also, it turns out the suitcase i'm using was given to my Dad for his 21st. How fitting. It's made by a company called 'Spartanite'. Probably from a limited edition of 300...

Au revoir, England.

2009-09-27T10:01:00.002+01:00

Two fairly major turning points in life today:

I can now legally drive an HGV.
As of about 20h00, i'm a French person.

Packing for Nantes.

2009-09-26T19:51:00.003+01:00

What do I need to pack? There's the obvious things, such as toothpaste. There's the less obvious, but necessary things, such as passport photos and plug-adapters. But the best category of all is the unobvious, and unnecessary things. On this list are:

Holographic eye glasses:

Regina Spektor 7" Single:

Lakerol tin of plectrums:

Impending France

2009-09-25T15:51:00.005+01:00

I got a new camera yesterday. It was a birthday present from Frida. Well, about three-quarters of it was, anyway. 'Twas about time I got a new camera - my former one worked perfectly well until the zoom lens decided to fall out one day, giving me a close-up of the floor that I didn't particularly want.

It is now two days before I leave for Nantes - two days in which I need to pack, buy shoes, get some leaflets about Horsham, work out budgets, and have a 21st birthday. Eek!

Nice as this photo of Nantes is, I hope the weather's not always like this...

Photo from Manuel MC's Flickr

One week to go...

2009-09-20T10:49:00.002+01:00

It seems there is only one week until I leave for Nantes. Eek! I still don't have a place to live. And, to top it all off, I leave on my 21st birthday. Hopefully, if they have any internets in France, i'll keep everyone updated with what's going on in Nantes on here. There's even a propr website - www.gavingreene.co.uk! Should probably change it to .fr though...

Anyway, this is what Nantes looks like. I'll put an arrow in when I can see my house.

Chesterland

2009-08-07T10:39:00.004+01:00

Just returned from Chester - 'twas a friend's birthday, so I trekked up there to visit him. It's actually a pretty nice place. On the first evening, we went out to a bar and a club, called 'Off the Wall' and 'Cruise' respectively. Both were pretty good, and a nice change from the normal Horsham nights out.

In 'Off the Wall', I had a drink which was possibly the best cocktail ever. It was called a Neon Dream, and it tasted amazing. Think Lovehearts, mixed with candyfloss and cream soda. Definitely a hardcore, MANLY drink...!

'Cruise' was stupidly packed, with seemingly thousands of people milling around, not really going anywhere, but still blocking every possile route anywhere. It was pouring with rain, and we had to queue for ages to get in, but it was a good evening nonetheless. Although the décor in the club made it feel cold, possibly due to the 'Svenska' theme...

Chester itself, nightlife aside, is a pretty nice place. We walked along the walls, and saw Wales in the distance. Lots of medieval buildings, more pseudo-medieval buildings, sneakily rebuilt, and a fair helping of coffee shops. All in all, a nice break from the monotony of One Stop. Speaking of which, my next shift starts in 3 hours and 8 minutes.... :(

Luthiery...

2009-07-24T11:25:00.004+01:00

I want to start getting properly into this luthiery business. The trouble is, it costs a lot of money to make a decent guitar. And, not knowing how i'll be living next year does make it slightly harder to plan ahead and buy wood. Until then, i'll have to just play the ones i've already made.

If anyone happens to stumble across this page, and decide "Yes, I want that man to make me a fine instrument", feel free to contact me. I can hope, anyway...

Here are the two latest guitars to have left the Greene workshop:

Eurasia: United

2009-07-22T11:10:00.002+01:00

Well, that took a long time. Finally, after the two-week long treasure hunt, spanning seven countries, the entirety of the new Muse song was released.

I know it's just a band and all that, but Muse does seem a little bit special compared to other groups. You wouldn't catch the Fratellis setting up something like this, and I don't think Johnny Borrell even cares about making decent music, let alone decent treasure hunts...!

It also helps that Muse have weirdly-obsessive fans. I thought I had a problem, until I found some of these other people. Still, the band very kindly caters for all the nutcases around the worldd by making ridiculously extravagant trails, for a simple 5-minute track. Which, incidentally, is awesome, and the viola, vocals and piano at 04:48 are possibly the greatest part of any song, ever. Possibly.

Now, back to normal life, sans anagrams and palindromes, minus agents and USB keys. Wish I was a spy.

Advantages of having a Swedish girlfriend #2

2009-07-20T11:32:00.003+01:00

When I went to stay with her over Christmas, I got to go ice-skating on this lake. I did think I was going to fall over/break the ice/die for a lot of the time, but the scenery was amazing. One day, i'll own a house looking across the lake, and sell hot tea to all the poor people who freeze their feet while extracting themselves from skates.

Advantages of having a Swedish girlfriend #1

2009-07-18T16:31:00.004+01:00

Cold meats. from skinka, to julskinka. All damn good.

The Great Chessboard

2009-07-14T12:22:00.003+01:00

The new Muse site went live yesterday, including a link to this site, where the following text can be found. It seems to be the begining of some long treasure hunt to get a download of the new single. It also seems like a lot of work to listen to one song...

Project Eurasia
FLASH BRIEFING DECLASSIFIED AND APPROVED FOR GENERAL RELEASE
PREVIOUS CLASSIFICATION: INDIGO ALPHA SHARD

GEOPOLITICAL EVENTS NOW NECESSITATE ACTIVATION OF THE STANDBY PLAN BRAVO NINER PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS GRAN AJEDREZ.

MARKERS INCLUDE REALTIME ASSESSMENT OF POLITICAL AND PUBLIC SENTIMENT AT -2.57 (KNIGHT INDEX), SOCIO-ECONOMIC INDICATORS AT [REDACTED], ENERGY STABILITY INDICATORS AT [REDACTED], GLOBAL MARKET VOLATILITY MARKERS AT [REDACTED] AND SOVEREIGN STATE MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS AT [REDACTED].

FOR GRAN AJEDREZ TO BE FULLY ACTIVATED, APPROVAL HAS BEEN GRANTED FOR WIDESPREAD MOBILISATION OF INITIATED NON-CONVENTIONAL HUMINT RESOURCES.

GRAN AJEDREZ WILL BE ACTIVATED IN A PHASED PROCESS. SUCCESSFUL ACTIVATION OF EACH PHASE WILL RESULT IN THE UNLOCKING AND DECRYPTION OF AN AUDIO BRIEFING. THE FULL PROJECT EURASIA / GRAN AJEDREZ AUDIO BRIEFING WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD UPON SUCCESSFUL ACTIVATION OF ALL PHASES.

2009-07-13T10:01:00.003+01:00

I got to work yesterday to find the manageress standing there waiting for me, looking more annoyed than i've ever seen her. It turns out there was actually a just cause for the anger: the previous day at work i'd somehow inadvertently deleted £11,000 of stock from the store's computer.

Had to spend most of the afternoon trying to right all the figures. Ah, the joys of One Stop...

Nantes

2009-07-12T12:41:00.005+01:00

I got a letter through the door yesterday, telling me where i'll be going in France next year. It's a place called Saint-Herblain, and it seems to be a suburb of Nantes. It looks reasonable enough. Except for that block of flats. Oh, and the ominous warning that there'll be CCTV watching me all the time...

Still, i'm sure it'll be a very nice place. Now to find a apartment...