Just to remind myself that autumn actually happened...

It's true that I really picked the wrong moment to hibernate -- here I am, getting back into things in order to complain about the winter, while the human was off doing his best to enjoy the great outdoors before coming home to let me out of my sleeping bag and turn the heating on.
Things I missed include:

An apple and sweet onion festival -- which also seems to have included red wine and chestnuts -- in company with some of the old friends who first set me on the path of chronicling the eccentricities of humans;

and a trip (via Westward Ho!, no less) to a notorious pirate lair, convenient for the observation of Shetland ponies employed by the National Trust for mowing and fertilisation purposes, and the sort of meta-signage that offers visitors the best means of dpriving visitors of the opportinuty of actually falling off the ends of the Earth.

Score one for heliocentrism, methinks.

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!

The gentrification of dead philosophers

or greetings from Sydney!

I'm still alive

Spring has sprung
and cherry blossoms keep falling on the bikepath!
More soon, I promise
Love to all,
Hugo

Mulled whine

The humans have once more seen fit go go away for the weekend without me. I'm not impressed -- especially since they returned boasting of a high-speed train trip complete wirth gluhwein service and (so I'm informed by one of the party) a very civilised thigh-level blow heater in the lavatory.

More to come just as soon as I stop sulking!

Of extraordinary derailleurs, and seals caught drinking champagne from sheepskin slippers...

I'm sure there's a link somewhere!

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.

C'est en faisant n'importe quoi qu'on devient n'importe qui

Shamefully stolen from elsewhere, but there's a good lesson here -- Les forçats de la route meets Barthesian epic meets "The Passion considered as an uphill bicycle race"...

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!

The Hosts! The Hosts!

My last batch of science-fictional friends had barely finished their cafeteria antics when news arrived of this most excellent show by the inimitable Wade. Good fun was had by all, and it's a fitting sendoff from a neighborhood that both the human and I -- in agreement for once -- are very sad to leave.

Robots in Ukranian peasant costume, you might say -- or a one-night stand between Daleks and Kulaks!

Indeed!

This thoughtful and heartwarming public service announcement was one of my highlights for a mid-week break in the mountains, though the humans seemed more impressed with the gallery the café was attached to. Magic Pudding indeed. Two days away and they were deep into hound withdrawal -- nothing for the humans but they couldn't stop themselves from bringing back gifts for him.

More food than I want to think about, a four-poster bed in the Shakespeare room (no less) and a commodiously triangular bath -- albeit served by a patent chrome soap dispenser above the sink requiring either sixty squirts of soap (rounded, for reasons that can only be divulged by the perpetrators, to the nearest twenty squirts) or dismantling with a 3mm allen key in order for the lids to be unscrewed.

Hills there may be in the mountains, but bringing one's bicycle at least ensures one has the appropriate tools!

And now for something fully sick...

First the human decided to become a dogfather, now everyone's doing it! There's a fluffy-tailed cat watching me from half way up the stairs as I type, and next thing I know another favourite human is talking of rescuing the following:
Sausage hound, 9 months old, black gloss with front flame job and white highlights, long wheelbase, lowered. Stock exhaust system with oscillating rear spoiler. Custom-made ramp recommended to protect rear end on large bumps. Will run on paprika blend but answers to Pudding.No promises, mind you!

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...

Modern Times, Religion and Parking Fines

Reserved for Bowler Hats and Walking Sticks

Ancient Inventions and their Modern Applications, Part I: The Siphon

The siphon is a most wondrous device.The principle is simple: take a length of hose, stick one end in a full container, the other end in an empty container below it, prime thine hose, and thine liquid moves from one container to another as if by magic. It has helped me move home-brewed beer from a large glass container into suitably-sized bottles on several occasions in diverse corners of the world, and I shall toast the wise and creative Egyptians that invented it as soon as the next batch is ready to drink.

The bath is an equally wondrous device, and the ancients are also to be praised for inventing ablutions, part and parcel of last week's otherwise diligent trip to the country, by means of train, train, bus, and the most welcome and generous many-wheeled articulated conveyance of Monsieur Paul, Bathurst-based Monty Python fan and occasional transporter of hydrated lime.

Siphons come in many shapes and sizes: one excting encounter during the week was with the jiggler siphon, a commodious means for transferring fuel from jerrican to motor quadricycle with a minimum of said carburant transferred to soon-to-be-pastry-making hands. And for draining the soon-to-be-revealed-as diesel fuel from motor quadricycle back into jerrican, and ultimately for effecting final transfer of previously-revealed-to-be petrol (unleaded; 91 octane) into said eventually-to-be-restarted motor quadricycle. But I digress. The ancients, to my knowledge, preferred to place chariot wheels side-by-side rather than in tandem, and in lieu of the laborious and recreative functions of the modern motor quadricycle mainly employed slaves.

The combination of siphon and bathtub, on the other hand, is a great advancement for relaxing outdoor ablutions, obviating the need to carry water in buckets from the nearest convenient hot-water tap, cunningly designed not to take the thread of standard outdoor hose fittings. Procedure is as follows, assuming water tanks of sufficient repleteness and an audience composed solely of placid bovines and close friends:

1. Fit plug in laundry sink; fill sink to a suitable level at a temperature calculated to account for further heat losses in transmission.

2. Ensuring the level of the bath is below that of the sink, insert one end of any convenient hosepipe in each, while leaving the tap running. Any rise and fall between the two ends of the hose will be self-cancelling.

3. Prime hose, either by manual application of upper end of hose to tap outlet until suction begins in earnest, or by suction on lower end. Ensure upper end of hose is well submerged in sink.

4. Allow final water level in bath to be determined by Archimedes' principle, and enjoy requisite ablutions.

The uses of public transport

Shamelessly ripped off another blog -- which includes links for donations!

Shades of Steinbeck

If anyone's asking, I'm happy to be played by Henry Fonda

De vehiculis sororium iuniorum

Les petites soeurs, faut avouer que c'est quand même utile des fois. Ça n'a jamais fait la vaisselle c'est sûr, mais ça finit par embaucher à plein temps et par conséquent posséder une voiture.

Surtout celle-ci, qui prédate l'esclave-humain de 11 ans et qui roule au pur nostalgie. 2 devant, 2 derrière, moteur en queue et réservoir d'essence en tête pour aider à la concentration. De même que les freins d'époque, disons pour apprendre à conduire de manière fluide. Compteur en miles/heure pour perfectionner sa technique de calcul mental, et éventuellement démentir les contraventions accusant de dépasser les 50km/heure réglementaires...

Un hippopotame qui se fait ami d'un loup habitant la bosse centrale du volant d'une coccinelle, vous me dites? Dis-moi dans quoi tu roules, et je te dirai quel hypocrite tu es!

Mythologie du vélo postmoderne, ou le choc culturel du capitalisme tardif

1. L'on pourrait constater d'abord que le 20ème siècle débute avec le modernisme, et plus précisement avec Alfred Jarry et sa Passion considérée comme une course de côte.
2. Ensuite, que ce siècle, pris au sens large, s'achève sous le signe du post-modernisme, du simulacre, du pastiche et de la reproductibilité à l'infini, dont l'avatar définitif serait l'installation du système Vélib à Paris au courant de l'été 2007CE.
3. Enfin, conclusion inéluctable, que la mésure la plus pertinente du progrès social et littéraire reste ... le vélo.

Principe, quoique peu novateur, qui nous permettra de dresser quelques remarques à propos de la problématique suivante : tout en respectant la chronologie esthétique du dit index vélocipédaire, comment tenir compte, étant donné un écart d'une vingtaine de milliers de kilomètres dans une quinzaine de jours, de la transformation des images photographiques de la situation (a) en situation (b) ?

(a)
(b)















Du rouge au noir ? D'une selle en cuir et des guidons diversément cintrés, au guidon droit et à la selle en matière artificielle, fendue et suspendue ? Des garde-boues chromés au fond de la cour aux dos crasseux par temps de pluie ? De la route autour de la Ste-Victoire un beau dimanche d'hiver, à une front garden de la banlieue gauche-caviar de Sydney un premier vendredi de Carême ? Des clichés anglo-saxons sur la Provence aux tentatives d'imiter la France qui se lève tôt ? De la rupture tranquille à la fuite du spectre d'EuroDisney ?

Beaucoup de questions, chers camarades, et si peu de réponses ... j'attends les vôtres.

Dans les mots de celui qui aurait bien su expliquer la perversité polymorphe de votre choix de bon et grâcieux président :

Encore un effort les Français !

Ça roule à gauche aux antipodes !

Bonjour à tous, ne vous inquietez pas : je suis enfin arrivé. M'exprimer dans la langue de Descartes doit signifier, je crois, que je suis encore loin de me remettre du décalage horaire...

Faudrait dire que les aixois comme les parisiens, de naissance et (surtout pour les aixois) d'adoption, m'ont bien aidé à remettre la montre sur GMT+10 dans les jours avant mon départ. Photos de vos nombreux baisers à suivre bientôt, c'est promis.

Me voilà donc sur la terrasse chez les parents de mon esclave-humain, en train de prendre le soleil sur une jolie râpe-fromage hollandaise :

L'humain a vu bon d'aller faire du bateau au lieu de travailler hier. Comme il y avait un bel orage d'été j'ai préféré rester au sec dans ma nouvelle petite maison--merci Annelies!

Et pour vous convaincre que je suis vraiment parti aux antipodes, me voilà au volant (bon, sur le levier des vitesses, mais vous voyez l'idée) de la Toyota familiale :


Volant à droite mais on roule à gauche ... moyen de tirer par les cheveux l'observation que les Australiens ont enfin signé Kyoto, vont apparemment s'excuser formellement auprès des peuples aborigènes à l'ouverture du Parlement la semaine prochaine, mais qui se font un point d'honneur d'être la nation au monde la plus gaspillatrice en eau et en énergie ?