Yuka

5 things to know about French television;

1. Kojak is on every night. (Literally) “Qui T’aime Bebe?”

French Telly… (smirk!)

2. Dallas is on every morning but has different title music which is more martial than the familiar, wah-wah guitar drenched, disco classic, and, seems to feature the Village People or a Russian male voice choir singing “DAARRL-ARRRRRSE” with great gusto. They’ve given JR a REALLY evil French voice in the overdub too.

3. The French LOVE a chat show. They love a chat show that goes on for a marathon 6 hours every Saturday. Same host, millions of guests. The only ones I’ve recognised so far were Grace Jones (who speaks very good French) and Natalie Imbruglia (who doesn’t).

4. France has 6 free-to-air, normal, old fashioned, terrestrial channels. 5 of them constantly broadcast absolute dross. 1 of them (Arte) is excellent and shows either excruciatingly long, black-and-white, strange camera angle, moody, no talking, no plot, films, or, totally impenetrable, four hour documentaries about people who make excruciatingly long, black-and-white, strange camera angle, moody, no talking, no plot, films. I’m a big fan of excruciatingly long, black-and-white, strange camera angle, moody, no talking, no plot, films by the way.

5. There is a 7th channel that you can get through your normal telly but it seems to be scrambled to varying degrees. The daytime cookery programs are just a bit scrambled (eggs) so it looks like your aerial needs a bit of a nudge, evening movies are a bit more scrambled so it feels like your eyes have gone a bit wonky and your ears could do with a good dig around with a cotton bud, then after midnight it goes into full blurred-o-vision and a soundtrack of insect speech as they switch to France’s nightly dose of hardcore pornography.

I have an idea for a way to earn money on my return to the UK (21st September, Jet-Facile to Gatwick) which involves possibly not working for a company. It involves using a laptop computer. I’m working on it in my office here…

The view from my office “window” is this…

French for “That really pisses me off” seems to be “gener mar”. Probably best if you assume that that’s spelt wrong. This is pronounced “Johnny Marr” and the French think it’s REALLY funny when you follow them saying this with “And Morrissey too”, especially the younger ones who have no idea who, or indeed what, you are on about. Want another picture of the kitten? Oh, go on then…

1. Never put a new cooker upright in the back of a van and then drive along a very bendy road. Thud, crash.

2. Continue to not smoke. It’s good, and that strange feeling I’m having increasingly regularly feels like it might be health.

3. Continue to do exercise in the morning. Still religiously doing 8 Minute Abs DVD which has turned into about 15 minutes with the groundbreaking and clever use of the pause button, followed by 25, count ’em, press ups (which are called Pompes in France). Stomach is disappearing. Bye bye, layers of congealing American Corn Syrup, that used to live blancmange-like around my belt area.

4. Wonder where the word Blancmange came from. You’d guess it was French wouldn’t you given that translated it means “White Eat” but my confident assertion of it’s Frenchness was met with Blancstares (he he!) from French people.

5. Put a picture on this website… Vero took this… I like to call it, “You Can Count On Me-ow”

Look monsters!

Quick, Hide!

Why is it all the good ones are getting sick and dying while the bad ones go from strength to strength?

The Cook,
the Thief,
his Wife,
and her Lover

While I’m still in my hate-Bush-Cheney-it’s-their-fault-i-can’t-have-cigarettes-or-go-to-America mood, I thought I’d share this picture with you.

In other news Chaton (French for Kitten and more accurately descriptive of his behaviour if said out loud) has opened his eyes this morning, and so is seeing everything around him for the first time ever which has set me thinking. Whirr… Whirr..

First Click Here…

The US must change the Visa Waiver scheme because the London bombers would have been allowed into the US using it, and if they change it so that everyone has to be interviewed, the bombers would still get in because unless they answer “Yes I am” to the question “Are you going to let off a bomb in America” they’re just the same as everyone else. So they must change the Visa Waiver scheme for why?

We’re all clear?

I am a Russian spy, Tony. That’s what I am….

God this stuff makes me mad. Once upon a time a bunch of geriatric loons that couldn’t get over their impending redundancy at the end of the cold war, and the tumbling share price of their war profiteering company Halliburton, took over the most powerful country in the world, completely hijacked it, persuaded the poor news starved, ill educated people there that they were in danger, and proceeded to live in a Fox News masturbatory fantasy, turning the entire world into a millitaristic theme park full of imaginary enemies… I’ll go back to bed…

Bet this fella doesn’t want a cigarette as much as I do…

“Smoking is for poor people…You never see rich people smoking. Truly rich people. Ever.” – Douglas Coupland.

Yes today I’m trying to become healthy again. You know that thing when you go through periods of wellbeing, generally brought on by being better to yourself; kicking the fags, cutting back on the sauce, having an early night, getting your arse off the sofa, eating a segment of an orange, going outdoors once in a while, inviting a vegetable on to your plate, that sort of thing? Well for some reason that feeling of wellbeing makes me want to smoke more, drink more, eat less veget… you get the idea; and then I start to feel rougher and the colds start to kick in again and so I try to start being kinder to myself by kicking the fags, cutting back on the…and round and round we go. Well today I have designated National “being-kind-to-myself-day” and like everyday with that title it involves alternating bouts of self-righteousness and desperate craving, the latter staved of by my trusty old Boots nicotine inhaler and large amounts of coffee, chewing gum and sugary coca-cola . BUZZZZZZZZZZ. Soon be healthy… Still doing 480 seconds of abs work out every morning (a whole 960 seconds the other day in a fit of must-get-fit-ness) and actually found some hard things below my ribs that kind of remind me of muscles I had 15 years ago, except they hurt more to get.

Gael the marine bought a motor bike.

Harvey had a ha-hyena.

Did I confuse you all? Really, I’m desolated. But fear not, my sister has not secretly popped out a couple of sprogs and sent them in exile to the south of France to be cared for by me. The niece and nephew to whom I refer on here are more properly known as my ex-common-law-nephew-and-niece, but really that’s a bit of a mouthful, and since they call me Uncle or in French; “Tonton” and, since I’ve been that to them for all but one of Margot’s nine years and all of Loic’s four, and since little Loic has a bad tum and I just had to wipe his butt, I tend to just call ‘em my nephew and niece for simplicity. That’s all really. Oh, and St Mandrier is all over the TV news at the moment in France ‘cos it keeps threatening to burn to the ground. Look here’s a blurry picture of it! (the yellow stuff is the fire)

I’m sure that idea will make certain people secretly happy.

In other news I’m up to a total of eighty minutes worth of the “eight minute abs” video. That’s over an hour in seasonally adjusted real terms, or ten times of me shouting obscenities at the steroidally enhanced fitness goon on my computer screen. My belly seems to be on the wane or my t-shirts are getting stretched. One or the t’other, but I am impressed with my perseverance. I think it’s mostly due to seeing the picture of me a couple of weeks ago on Geoff’s site. If he wasn’t an old friend I may have sued for the defamatory nature of his obviously doctored picture attempting to make me look somewhat fat and less than devilishly handsome. It may have something to do with watching the sea level rise as I jump in, but maybe that’s just my imagination…

At the moment I’m in a garden overlooking the Med with a beer in my hand, my computers connected to the internet wirelessly, the sun’s shining, I’ve got some Provencal tat up on ebay to see if anyone wants to buy it, and McAlmont And Butler’s wonderful, summery Bring It Back album is playing in the background. Aside from some sad emotional stuff, life could indeed be less good than it is.

Wanna buy this?

What’s big news here?

Biggest news is something little. I was midwife to a cat variously known as Pamponette, Vampirette and Chat, on the arrival of this little fella, aged 1 hour in the picture below;

Mother and littl’un doing fine.

In other news from our “run away the south of France is on fire” desk, there was a fire in a forest near Toulon today that literally turned the sky black. I didn’t take a photo but believe you me, black it was and the sun disappeared which is a rare occassion here, except at night obviously, when it isn’t.

So in the spirit of all things cat, I was explaining to my nephew aged 4 and niece aged 9 today that the biggest cat in the world ever is a Liger, a rare hybrid of Lion and Tiger, hence the name. Ligers are the name of the product of a Lion father and a Tiger mother. When the mum’s a Lion, they become Tigons because the world is sexist like that and they are less big than Ligers and less good looking.

Have a look at some Ligers;

(Liger is the hairy fella on left with worried looking tiger on right for scale purposes)

Big ain’t they? In a jaw dropping, oh-mi-god-is-that-real kind of way.

So I shared with my nephew and niece the rhyme I made about Ligers and Tigons which helps you remember which way round the sizes go.

Ready?

Ligers are bigger than Tigons,
And Tigons are bigger than Cats,
And if Ligers and Tigons lived in your house,
You’d never have trouble with rats.

Thankyou. X