Snow!

Here we go again -- it's officially cold, and the human is finding better and better excuses not to ride to work -- though paradoxically he seems less worried about doing so late at night on machines belonging to street furniture monopolies...
The more fashion-conscious amongs our four-legged friends may be feeling the need for one of these.
Not sure if that will be much help for this fine specimen, though I certainly wouldn't mess with it!

Snow falling on Vélibs

and on secret Parisian gardens...

and on other vegetation...

...but remember folks: keep off the grass!

Anarchy in the Helvetian Confederation

Well, the humans have been doing their best to butter me up with chocolate and appenzeller cheese, though as usual they've been busily talking about the deer sausage they enjoyed for a post-concert bed-picnic rather than actually saving me any. The ukulele concert -- as they never seem to tire of reminding me -- was excellent fun, with old favourites and a couple of new numbers washed down with quite respectable Italian champagne. I'm told the sight of an eminently respectable Swiss audience being warmed up to sing the chorus to a Simon and Garfunkel arrangement of a Sid Vicious classic is really quite something!
Meanwhile the city's other marvels included mulled wine aplenty, hospitable and moderately-priced model-train-themed hostelries, and a ferryboat powered by nothing other than the current of the Rhine. The boat is attached to a pulley running on a cable running across the river, much in the manner of an aqueous flying fox, and crosses sideways facing into the current, its movement regulated by the position of its rudder. Culture, other than that offered by ukuleles, was not forgotten: the humans had much to say about the excellent Kunstmuseum and were even kind enough to bring me a photograph of a friendly-looking creature overlooking the courtyard ice rink.
Perhaps we can become penpals.

Of velocipedes and boopotamy

I have been much neglecting my writings lately, sadly, as there has been much to do keeping the human on the straight and narrow. This became urgent three weeks ago when he decided to embark with an intrepid colleague on an autumn jaunt along the Canal du Nivernais, braving rain and pinot noir in pursuit of the Burgundinian sublime.

Sweet showers rightly belong in April -- it must have been the humans' decision to put up for the night in a pilgrims' residence that led both rain and gravitation to make the experience as authentic as possible. Complain they might, but Romanesque basilicae are designed to be built on top of hills that are intended to be walked up, in the dark and if possible on one's knees.

Sunday lunch of wild boar stew and complimentary pâté sounds tempting -- sorry Fidel! -- but it was quite a relief to have a weekend to myself in a nice warm kitchen. Greetings from canalside cows notwithstanding, I think I got the better end of the deal.

In defence of the stack

or things that make 8am classes bearable!

Non licet ombinus Londinium adire!

I'm trying not to complain too much about being left to guard plum jam in Lutetia while the human conveyed himself to Londinium by stella europae on the slightly dubious pretext of purchasing books and visiting the bibliotheca britannica. All Gaul may be divided into three parts, but the human was able to confirm in person earlier documentary evidence that the British have made progress in the blessed domain of cheesemaking:
Needless to say the human returned immoderately well fed, on everything from bacon (viz.)

with eggs and hollandaise sauce, Szechuan hot-pot ("hot and numbing" read the menu -- and I was most intrigued to note an apartheid-like divider allowing two different broths to be cooked in the one pan), aperitifs aboard what I suppose one would have to call a public houseboat, and finally an excellent Korean barbecue only rendered incongruous by being served in a quiet South-East London local with careworn oak panelling:
Old friends make for great happiness, and there is even news from the illustrious Dr. L that my dear comrade Fidel has emerged from hiding under a bed in Hackney. I can only hope I'll be included in the next visit...

Nuit blanche II: on the unexpectedly versatile nature of erstwhile garden installations

The improvised water tank formerly of West-Nor'-West Redfern was always an unpretentious affair, filling itself from a backed up drainpipe and washing machine hose arrangmeent when it rained, and keeping the garden alive for days at a time between summer showers.

Little did I imagine that its kind would go on to dominate both the entrance to the Buttes Chaumont and the Pont St-Louis! The future may well bring us luminous cities of plastic water cubes, but it's nice to know they haven't forgotten their roots -- allotments ahoy!

Nuit blanche I: Dancing at the Centquatre

On a more cheerful note from a slightly earlier era, long live the return of the bal populaire -- dancing 1940s style complete with braces, net veils and accordions! The place may have once been a morgue but it seems no less jolly for the experience, and to top it off there's a late-night bookshop selling postcards of old photos captioned with truly appalling puns -- who but the French could pour half their science budget into la fission de la tomme?

Putting things on a pedestal

or explaining the human's reluctance to invest in a basil plant to place on the kitchen window sill as autumn approaches:

Fame precedes me!

As do vertical gardens attached to the front façade of menswear chains...

Of unexpected châteaux and the objects to be found on their doorsteps

When he wasn't excalming to all and sundry about how the country really was divided into three parts, the human's last Gallic expedition seemed to revolve largely around the search for a suitable château.

This time around, he seems to have found one -- conveniently linked to public transport, no less -- in the most unexpected of places. The châtelaine is expected.
The setting is most pleasant, the interior is most spacious and the furnishings most commodious. Administrative and financial bureaucrats of various stripes seem unexectedly eager to please. The bibliotheca quadriturricula subterraneana is closed for holidays, but there is a well-catalogued library of several thousand volumes on the premises. The natives who maintain it are more than friendly -- books are not the only object occasionally to be found on the doorstep when returning from an excursion by bisorbiculus liberalis:

I'm not complaining!

Voyeurism on the ukulele!

Death Star Canteen

From the benificent if occasionally nihilistic presence at Fumbling Darkly.
That's what you get for eating in most of the cafetarias I've encountered lately...

Futurist Cooking Lives!

Who's hungry now?

A house for a hound!

With thanks to the crew from Steve's World, and to the many openings afforded by the back shed!

Greenwash

Time was when Nero fiddled while Rome burned -- a pursuit whose merits can be debated, perhaps, but rendered obsolete (in urban areas at least) by the advent of modern firefighting.
We do self-destruction differently here on the driest continent on earth. If you're going to go in for Oxbridge pastiches then you might as well do it properly -- no point watering the grass unless it's already raining!

Railing against incompetence

It must be tough being a transport planner in the service of the rum corps -- not only do they have some of the silliest liquor licensing laws in the country, but coming up with imaginative new cock-ups day after day must be a real challenge.

Witness the latest plan -- a metro line designed to solve the city's problems by taking people from one point already well serviced by public transport to another, the latter of which has the distinction of having nowhere to put or send the expected influx of passengers once arrived.

But wait, there's more -- we now learn that doing so would require already existing trains to terminate at the old country platforms, then get out of the way before the next ones come in, a feat that even the eternal optimists acknowledge to be impossible.

The French also seem to have encountered this problem. Witness what happened in 1895, five years before their own metro system finally opened, when a steam train slightly overshot the conventional stopping point at the Gare Montparnasse:
On this basis, I fell confident in declaring that public transport in Sydney is precisely 115 years begind its equivalent in Paris, although more precise estimates will depend on budgetary projections for the Broken Hill hydroelectric scheme...

O tempura! O mores!

Not battered Japanese, sadly, but almost as fluffy.

It wasn't the first time I'd passed by the monstrosity above, though it had been quite a while, and it was perhaps the fact that I was returning from a successful mission to retrieve quite a nice art-deco sideboard from a rather tacky exectutive housing estate that made the stuck-on columns stick out all the more.

That and the fact that the polystyrene core is showing through the imitation danstone effect veneer in places, lending the joint an air of rather more genteel decay than it deserves. I doubt he was thinking of small-time gambling dens in suburban Sydney, but I suspect this isn't what Albert Speer meant by his theory of ruin value.

Reports, demise, exaggeration...

That's right.

62 little coloured blocks for every person on the planet.

Don't underestimate lego, folks!

A Hippo's Château is his, well, Château

DON'T MESS WITH HORACE!