Paris, je t'aime!

Je coeur Paris. I can't help it. From its triumphant arches down to its cobblestone streets; its Art Nouveau metro stops with their graceful Amelie accordian music; its myriad offerings of cheese and the cheap wine that accompanies them so well. I love it I love it I love it. Even its prickish French inhabitants. Relax, have a cigarette, you're in Paris.

I want to live in Paris, and not least among the reasons is that half the city takes the month of August off work, and the other half content themselves with a mere two weeks away from the office. Forget the Spanish siesta. What's four hours in the afternoon when you can take a month off in the summer? Don't answer that, it's rhetorical, but if you're still wondering, the answer is nothing. So if ya like, come visit me in Paris next year, I'll be there eleven months out of twelve, but come the summertime, it's the Tahitian life for me, and the only architecture I'll be thinking of is grass huts on a beach with a view of the sea.

Care for a frog leg?

Someday You Will Find Me

Had a clear sky for a change last night, and so was able to once again sit out in the backgarden of an evening with a cup of tea and watch the stars do absolutely nothing. Which is typical of bloody stars. Giant nuclear reactors they tell me, cosmic explosions of unimaginable magnitude they claim, and yet all I see is a faint glimmer struggling through the glow of the city lights. Well I don't believe it. Give me a Copernican model any day, with a fixed sphere of stars surrounding us and life'll be a hell of a lot easier. No more incomprehensible distances or times, just our own little self-contained bubble, and to hell with whatever else is in the universe. Strange topic for a rant, yes, but I want life, the universe, and everything to be simple. I want to know why these things happen, and I want to see them happen. And I want to see comets fall and planets collide.

I want a champagne supernova in the sky.

Wheel of Fortune

So I was talking to one of the partner's here in the office about the documents I'm working on this week, and he told me to ask some of the other architect's for help on it. 'Don't waste time reinventing the wheel,' he says to me. And I start thinking about this. It's not like it would be particularly difficult to reinvent the wheel would it? Can't take that much time really. I mean, any old gap-toothed Neanderthal with a cacao bean hangover could do it. You just roll a round rock down a hill. No, no, it was the axle that was the difficult part I'm sure. Some clever bastard must have come up with that one. All those bearings and shafts and whatsits. I was riding on a bus in Morocco once when the axle fell off, so obviously the techniques are still being refined.

I tuned back in to what my boss was saying at this point, just in time to be summarily dismissed from his office having no idea what he'd just told me to do. Which is why I'm sitting here describing the experience, rather than, well, working. See, it all makes sense. Really it does. And it's all alright.

I'm not a slacker, my mind's just flighty.

Spoiling the Soup

I'm a self-conscious chef. I can't help it. It's not that I'm particularly bad at cooking, I might shy away from it and its demands on time, but when I do bother to cook it's usually alright. I can measure things, follow a recipe, turn on the stove, all of those things. But I hate having someone else there. I time my cooking in the flat for when none of my flatmates are home. And I'm not entirely sure why. I think I have a fear of people walking by and critiquing my inexperienced methods. 'Oh, you put the pasta in the water before boiling it? I see...' or 'the onion should be diced only after removing concentric rings at a 37 degree angle in a self-contained room heated to 3 degrees above room temperature, and then soaked in chilled water before dancing over it while waving a pogo stick...' or even 'You don't take the pizza out of the wrapper before baking it? How strange...' Only the first of these has ever happened, in case you wondered, but every moment spent in the kitchen is spent under the fear of such comments. Maybe I just feel inadequate. My years of study have not left me properly equipped for such domestic matters.

Or maybe I just need a bigger chef's hat.

Good Evening Dress

Was invited last night, after punting along the Thames for the evening, to a workmates house dinner. Gathered closely around a candle lit table, eating a curry, and drinking wine from a pitcher with a group of Oxford University students, two of whom have just finished their studies with the highest possible honors and served as presidents of their respective college's student bodies. A little out of my depth? Yes. And so you know, do not get involved in a debate on British foreign policy and its various images during the Thatcher and Blair administrations with a group of well-informed Oxford graduates who quite probably know more about your own government than you yourself do. Other topics of conversation, such as the Jerry Springer opera, however, are absolutely fine. The evening too was made more into of a production on English life due to the presence of my work compatriot, who is the quintessential English gentleman, and, provided one can still buy their way into the Peerage and House of Lords, will one day be Lord Longland. Quintessential is rapidly becoming one of my favourite English words; largely because I only vaguely know what it means. Mister Longland's taste in clothes hearkens back about a hundred years, and he's more than willing to, at the slightest provocation, reveal to anyone at hand his rows of polished shoes and top hats, white ties and coat tails, silver-tipped canes and shoe trees. A small fortune in attire.

His collection of tweed is particularly impressive.

Cabbages and Kings

D'you remember back in high school on the tennis team when 'Cabbages!' supplanted any traditionally used swear word after a missed shot? No, course you don't, you weren't there. Except you. And you. Maybe you remember it. I don't remember though how it began. I think it was a misinterpretation of my yelling 'G'be jeez!,' which was naturally a corruption of the common, 'Good be jeezus!,' itself a follow on from the more sacriligeous by virtue of it's understandability, 'Holy Jesus!,' which itself evolved from the common, if quaint, 'Damn it!' So why do I bring this up? I think I'm getting nostalgic in my old age. Why then, is this a point of nostalgia for me? The short answer is that it's not, 'cause I still use the word 'Cabbages!' as a swear. But nobody gets it anymore.

Oh well, at least I can cut the mustard well enough.