France (Page 5)

Music night involves bands playing for free all over France. These guys, who are apparently Welsh, were on in the Irish pub, in Grenoble… and played one of my favourite songs ever. They were much better than the audio on my camera makes them sound. I stopped at the pub on a whim. I’d been out walking, and thought that a guinness would be nice after some hours of hilly countryside hearty healthiness. I sat down, exhausted, and it was lovely to hear them break into one of my favourite songs ever.

Some things I’m going to find it hard to get used to, #2 in a series of N… The politeness. People in the street say “Bonjour!”, whenever you sit down to eat strangers wish you “Bon Appetit”, you get greeted when you enter a shop and they bid you farewell when you leave, groups of teenage lads shake hands when they meet each other. It’s all rather nice. The temperature. Note to self: curry might last a day or so when left in the pan in Leeds, but here, a day on the stove top is a recipe for interesting furry growth. Oops. I wasRead More →

Last weekend I went out on the bike to check out some of the countryside around Grenoble. Grenoble’s got two big rivers – the Drac and the Isère – and on Saturday I went up the Drac for a while (only getting lost three times). To start with I followed the cycle path from by the Intermarché at Seyssins, which runs along the banks of the river and then ends up in a retail park (Comboire, a big park of shed like shops, coincidentally where I bought my bike from). This path is really rather beautiful – river, mountains, no traffic… Then there was aRead More →

I’ve been having some fun reading about the French take on the expenses scandal. Libération ran a piece on Saturday (March 30) on whether the same sort of thing could happen in France, with the obligatory section on moats (les douves), duck houses (une ile à canards construite au milieu d’un étang) and that old favourite les films X of Jacqui Smith. French MPs can claim for obvious stuff like photocopying, taxis, restaurant bills, website costs (which are high if you run les podcasts), and a whole host of things associated with residences in constituencies and staying in Paris. And as in the UK, FrenchRead More →

Internet’s been a bit intermittent. I have two choices An internet caff in town, with good music, coffee, friendly staff, two and a half euros per hour, and q bloody french keyboqrd zhich i reqlly hqve to think auite hqrd zhen using. The library, which has free wifi, but blocks port 22 (so no access to ssh or filestore) and blocks Facebook and Twitter. The library is where I’ve mostly been going though. The view is better.

Some things I’m going to find it hard to adapt to, #1 in a series of N: The prevalence of bank holidays – and the way that people forget they’re happening. It’s all wonderfully laid back. (Actually, people tell me that I’ve turned up at the worst time for bank holidays and it’s much more normal the rest of the year, but hey, by Monday, I’ll have been here 2 weeks and everything will have been shut for 3 weekdays out of 10). Cheques being effectively money: my new landlord is happy to accept a cheque for deposit & rent the day I move in.Read More →

I had an interview last week and they liked me and I liked them, so soon, I hope, I’ll be living in Grenoble (I’ve not seen anything in writing yet, but they seem very trustworthy). It’s all a bit mental, really – but I figure that if the right research job for me can’t be found in Leeds (where I have a husband and a house and some cats and a garden with some apple and pear and cherry trees and etc. etc.) then I might as well live somewhere interesting. It’s going to take the cherry trees 4 years before they produce any fruitRead More →