vendredi 28 février 2003

Night's Dawn "When will you read a real book about real people, instead of all this escapism?" was the exasperated maternal remark when I made my last trip cross-Channel and stocked up not only on the tech tomes I rarely see through cover to cover, but a fresh pile of science fiction. Culture costs less off English shelves. So this year's decision to read nothing but sci-fi could be taken as a latest act of eternally adolescent rebellion. My definition of good science fiction includes real people. Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke never did much for me ("2001" apart). It's not any lack of ideas, but too many cardboard characters. Ursula K. Le Guin has long been my humanitarian heroine. I've just devoured my first space opera, the "Night's Dawn Trilogy" by Peter F. Hamilton. One reviewer called him the "Wagner of the genre." I don't know about that, but he writes exceedingly well and suspends disbelief - particularly on the plot theme at the very heart of the matter - with a thunderously good yarn. One night, I had real trouble dozing off, unsure as to where I was after Hamilton had left me among three parallel universes. Or was it still just two? Or manifold aspects of just the one? As I cast my mind back to where the first volume started, the sheer scope and scale of places visited since sank in. "In hindsight it wasn't a good idea to write it at all," Hamilton commented once it was done. Tongue firmly in cheek, that's for sure. 10:49:52 AM  link   your views? []

jeudi 27 février 2003

Le clash de cultures I've referred twice to a paper unlooked at in years before the anti-French rant was distributed in the thousands in Paris. I said people were "bemused" by The Sun's "Chirac is a Worm" front page: That same day, Libération headlined, rather, "Chirac, parrain d'Afrique". The Godfather. Amid conflicting views over whether Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, pariah and bane of Blair, should have been invited to the Franco-African biennial love-fest. What perplexed my French mates more than The Sun's banner, which merited little more than a shrug, was the inside: headlines such as "LOVELY BRISTOLS" and "Nice hooters, Amanda". "What's with the Brits? Nation de coincés?" Of course, there's a gutter press here too. But different things faze different peoples. Chirac may be widely regarded as a thief and a villain, but the French press would not say so and he is, still, Monsieur le Président. Blair is such a clean Crusader. While US papers were full of Monica Lewinsky, the French found it perfectly normal that the late president François Mitterand's mistress should attend his funeral along with his wife. That's just how it is, was and always might be. Amid the furore last week, Le Monde saw fit not to bother with any of it. The 50th anniversary of Stalin's death was far more to its taste: The inside pages followed through on the theme. I collect things like this. The day the Berlin Wall fell. Mandela's release. 9/11, as some of my American friends insist on calling it. Dozens of others. Someone very special will get the lot on her 18th birthday. And what's the betting she'll turn to the fashion pages instead? My first month in France, somebody thrust the dreaded Becherelle into my hands and ordered me to get a grip of those fearful verbal conjugaisons. Ouch! But she also suggested I read Theodore Zeldin's 'The French'. It's still one of the best there is. 10:15:25 PM  link   your views? [] Skew(er)ed? Rarely do I listen to Britain's parliamentary debate, but the wrap of yesterday's had to be an exception. In the House of Lords - its demise or overhaul indefinitely put on hold yet again - speeches were measured, weighty, ponderous. The "rebellion" in the Commons was presented as something else. Had the fat lady sung, nobody would have heard her! Tony Blair took the biggest slap in the face anybody can ever remember for a serving prime minister from his own side remarkably calmly. I thought I might catch a tremor in the voice, a hint of uncertainty. But no. Well, he got backing this morning from one tabloid in the wilderness: The Sun, whose Chirac est un ver stunt bemused the French last week. The Mirror saw it all otherwise. But then John Pilger had used that platform for his strongest outburst against the trans-Atlantic alliance well before the huge street protests. One voice of the "chattering classes", the Guardian, attempted a "best of" summary of conflicting views. Just a few jottings from the mainstream. Me? As complex as it is simple: I see no moral case for a pre-emptive war on Iraq. None whatever. But it was good to hear some key points brought back into that mainstream this morning, rather than having to try to see over the mud of the biggest propaganda barrage, on all sides, journalists have had to endure since 1991. 10:45:26 AM  link   your views? []

mercredi 26 février 2003

Yes, Heather, you can: the Axeman That time of year. The government will always ask you for money in winter when you're at your bleakest, weakest and bleariest. (Just as it will always pass the most unpleasant legislation in summer when it thinks you think it's on holiday too. Irrespective of its colour, which is usually a kind of muddy purple now anyway.) If you insist on paying your taxes on line, start here (French, but really quite clear). But consider the alternatives, too. 1) If you use a computer, they will perhaps ask for the paperwork to back up your outrageous claims anyway. 2) Should you go to the tax office, smile! Be nice. Make them feel they're doing you a favour. Bring a ray of joy into their weary, underpaid lives. I promise: it disarms them utterly! You've almost won before you begin. Observe the three people in front of you in the queue. Two of them are likely to launch in on a war footing from the first moment. Your own act is unlikely to see them actually cut what you owe, but should you need a reprieve, you'll get one. 9:33:34 PM  link   your views? [] City of Light, right? Write?! Oui, mon ami - the one but not so only "Paris, France". I shall write about living here when things seem worth saying, but two decades down the line, there's a lot you no longer "see". Fresher eyes are younger ones - "at this moment in time, Jim." OK. This week the sun shone. Magnifique et rare! But winter is generally damp, low-cloud grey and grim forbearance. Nice when people clear out of the place for the school hols. Some of those Métro stations that so stun you with efficiency shut down for weeks, sometimes months, on end, for a repaint and retiling job. The super-fast express walkway at Montparnasse-Bienvenüe station hasn't worked for ages. Not with elderly people, and some less senior citizens, tumbling forwards and backwards into the arms of whole teams of grinning, smartly uniformed RATP personnel awaiting their next victim. "Ne lever pas les pieds! Ne lever pas les pieds! Ne lever pas les pieds!..." The announcement should say "Next stop, Casualty!" In fact, I do believe it was broken ankles that put an end to it for now. Only twice have I experienced the whoosh-walk in action: best free (mechanical) foot massage in town when you roll on and off. To think that they shut the whole tunnel junction down for nearly the whole of last winter to make it, forcing les citoyens out into the bitter windtrap around the black monster, the Tour Montparnasse. The Brass Monkey Tower. For now, try thinkparis or parisvoice. Online, in English, sometimes hip. Ah yes, speaking of "hip", merci, ma belle Michelle, chère collègue. I value your blogging counsel! I do know where I'm going with this, but it's not ready to go public quite yet. Once a book or two comes through from Amazon UK, once I've got my head around a bit of HTML, once I've sussed out how to do the links and the comments. God forbid - comments?! No, it will not be a geek blog, 'cos I'm not a geek. And certainly not a stream of consciousness. My first one of those ended when I was about two and a half, though some say I never stopped babbling, and the next will not begin for at least another 20 years. I hope. Categories? Yes, well, we'll get to that! I didn't take you for such a Cartesian. But first there's the little matter of deciding whether the interests of my anarchistic mind can be classified! 9:00:24 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 25 février 2003

Well done, bruv'! While I spend a large part of my waking life editing news out of Africa, brother Alex's feet are just itching to stalk off into the bush again! Once a nightmare of red tape, partnership issues and the vagaries of a relatively new Zambian government forever in turmoil let him. Still, it's some consolation, I hope, to keep Afrikeye going in the meantime! D'you still mind having to do it all over again after last year's fearful data loss, Alex? No Jaguars on that continent. But you're looking good both in Chimera (soon to change name) and Safari. You haven't, ahem, reconsidered giving that tail of yours a switch? I know: "Spare me the platform war." Quite. There are more serious ones to fret about nowadays. 9:33:53 PM  link   your views? [] Canned meat in excess With all the time it took to set up spam filters in Eudora, it came as a relief today to see that a record 47 unsolicited offerings were shunted straight to the trash, only one of which should not have gone there. But this left me wondering whatever happened to the concern dating back almost a year: that Apple's own Mail app was filtering spam without our knowledge. All in the best interest of the client, no doubt! ;) Mail's come a long way since then, its junk filter actually seems to work after some months! But then nobody's yet started using that address to offer me sex with a goat! The University of California even offers a layman's guide to setting up this "heuristic" feature. How I like things explained in pictures! 8:55:48 PM  link   your views? [] 'Don't mention the war!' "Austria was Hungary, Very Very Hungary, Ate a bit of Turkey, Dipped in Greece. Long-legged Italy, kicked poor Sicily, Into the Mediterranean Sea." I don't know why that classroom ditty from another era leapt into mind this morning, but it came back when I learned that Turkey had been bribed off the fence. Money. As ever. Though Austria's pretty quiet these days. I could swear I heard a BBC person in Ankara say that one factor under consideration by Turkish politicians was how much VAT on commodities US troops might have to pay if and when they turn up. 10:58:33 AM  link   your views? []

lundi 24 février 2003

Orchestra Baobab So some of the real veterans of the African music scene are among the winners in the BBC Awards for World Music 2003. In my halcyon years with Auntie Beeb, back in the '70s, you'd be lucky to hear any of that kind of thing broadcast before 11 pm at the earliest! 10:17:34 PM  link   your views? [] Seeking Big Brother? With zero expertise in HTML and blogging a belated discovery, once I'd found NetNewsWire steeped in hot cocoa, it took me a week's looking and then a day's doing to set this one up. iBlog got me interested as one means of putting a .Mac account to good(?) use. It's a great idea, but - for now - falls short in the implementation. It'll be a while before I graduate to MovableType. Blogger was another easy way to start doing something, but there are aspects of the recent takeover by Google that have me alarmed. Mildly. Just where is the Matrix? 8:11:40 PM  link   your views? [] Solaris When Tarkovsky's Solaris hit the screens, I saw it twice in as many days. Still it lingers, three decades down the line. It takes guts to try a remake of a film like that! I'd give 7/10 for Soderbergh's effort. It grew on me overnight. Not a movie which insults the intelligence, sometimes it's very beautiful indeed, and who really cares whether it's completely faithful to the book? Most of the Paris critics love it, but the film-going public doesn't agree. I hope it works out: George Clooney hinted in an interview last week that if it doesn't, we could see a "Batman and Robin 2" after all. 6:30:04 PM  link   your views? []