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?

Years of insouciance, or la vie en rose: animal rights, racism and sex kitten nostalgia

"Never with a vacuum cleaner", the subject of this post once said in response to an appliance magnate's request to dance on a yacht in St. Tropez. Needless to say, plenty of white late middle aged vacuum cleaner salesfolk in evidence at the exhibition opening, though the animals seem to have stayed away in solidarity with the immigrants. The human assures me he only braved the sea of pink because there was free champagne on offer, and promises -- promises -- that his lengthy stare at the sight below was one of pure bewilderment. I'll let you be the judge.

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:

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"...

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!