On Halloween, part 2

Luckily in my last post about Halloween I did say I was willing to participate in it as a boozy, adult activity, otherwise I'd look pretty silly right about now, ha ha! Anyway, I got a text when I was in Poitiers asking if I wanted to go out for some Halloween drinks. Since I wasn't working the next day, I thought it sounded like a fine idea. But then the next text asked if I had any costume to wear, since they were planning to dress up. Erm, no? And being in Poitiers (more on that later), I had no way to assemble one anyway.

I racked my brains (not very hard, as we shall see) and all I could come up with was 'sexy librarian', on the grounds that people could quibble with the sexy part, but there's no arguing with the librarian bit (although actually, French people do, they always call me a 'documentaliste', which annoys me for some reason). This literally involved putting on clothes I would wear to work anyway, adding patterned tights, shiny red shoes, a belt, glasses, hair in a bun, red lipstick and, the pièce de résistance, unbuttoning the top two buttons of my cardi. Ha ha!

I then amused myself with a home photo shoot of the results. I should put a disclaimer here that, despite the stereotype, librarians do not all wear glasses, have their hair in a bun, and spend their time shushing people. Also, the people you see in libraries shelving books are almost certainly not librarians. That's below my pay grade dahlink. Also a disclaimer that these are just me pissing about, not seriously going for sexy!

I had enormous fun by myself at home, music playing, getting ready and larking about taking photos, and then the actual night out was really average. Always the way, innit? I think I should just stay at home drinking and having one-person parties in future. Oh and I got a call from my friend partway through my little photo shoot to say that no-one was dressing up, so the sexy librarian never saw the light of day anyway! So this is a 'web exclusive'...

Just shelving, as usual, lalala... What's that, a camera?!


SHHHH!


You're not trying to return a book after the due date I hope?

On Halloween

Around this time of year, you tend to get a lot of (mostly) Americans expressing horror at the idea that I (and the French) didn't grow up celebrating Halloween. Don't I feel like I missed out? Well, no, actually. To take the example of another festival going on right now, it's like asking if you (presuming you don't celebrate it) feel like you've been missing out on Diwali for all these years. I'm guessing your probable reaction would be something along the lines of "looks great, it would be fun to take part in some time, but it's not part of my culture so no, I don't feel as though I missed out on it".

Sure, as a kid it would have been great to dress up and get given a lot of free chocolate by people. Well, actually, maybe not so much the dressing up part. We weren't really a "dressing up" family. Infamously, one year when I was about 5 or 6 (and my Mum is probably going to cringe hearing this brought up again), for the school Book Week my older brother got kitted out as Biggles (fictional ace fighter pilot) which included having the plane built around him, whereas I (the family's limited energy for That Sort Of Thing having been exhausted) got to go as The Paper Bag Princess. In case you're wondering, to the best of my recollection, that involved cutting a neck-hole in a heavy paper rubbish sack and sending me off to school in it. I couldn't sit down in the thing all day. Apart from school plays, I remember dressing up one other time as a kid, which was Pippi Longstocking (also for Book Week, I think). I can't remember what Pippi Longstocking wears exactly, but I think it consisted mostly of stripey tights and putting my hair in plaits with wires in to make them stick out. So yeah, not really ones for going all out in that department.

But even as a kid, I was aware of Halloween from books, and I honestly don't remember feeling like I wished I could take part in it. Sure, I wished I could be like Claudia Kishi with exotic-sounding American "candy" stashed all around my room, but I never remember wishing to acquire said candy at Halloween. (How I longed as a child to be eating HoHos and Babe Ruths and whatever else you have. Then I grow up and discover almost everything has peanuts in it. Gross. I have a (stupid) theory that the chief cultural divide between Europe and the United States is that, in America, everything has peanuts in it, and in Europe, everything has hazelnuts in it...) If anything, I wanted to be a little English girl enjoying Devonshire teas and lashings of ginger beer on the lawn, not a little American girl going trick or treating and watching out for razor blades in my apples (seriously, what kid wants apples if there's chocolate on offer anyway? It's like how my Mum and Dad - sorry, Santa - used to put an apple and an orange in my Christmas stocking because that was a treat when they were little. War's over, Mum and Dad!).

And as an adult, the whole idea of Halloween (other than strictly adult-only costume parties involving lots of booze - and even then, I still don't really have the dressing-up gene) appalls me. I'm going to sound like the Halloween version of the grinch, but I don't like children. The idea of having troupes of them coming to my door and demanding MY chocolate is the stuff of nightmares as far as I'm concerned. (Now I probably am going to have a nightmare about it and wake up screaming, "My chocolate! My chocolate!" and chewing the pillow.) And the whole idea of 'trick or treat' is really offputting. I don't know whether in real life people actually go around egging houses or throwing toilet paper in trees like in the movies, but the underlying concept of "give us stuff or we'll exact our revenge" is horrible. It kind of reminds me of the tipping thing - again, I expect in real life it's not as extreme as you see on TV, but the whole trope of the badly-tipped waitress spitting in your food or your mailman breaking your packages etc. is just nasty from where I'm standing.

As with most aspects of American culture, Halloween seems to be catching on more and more at home (at least when I left). Next thing you know we'll be celebrating Thanksgiving... Of course I don't think this is any sort of deliberate cultural imperialist ploy by the average American citizen - for one thing, my English Dad (I don't have an English Dad and another Dad, just to be clear) has stories of carving turnip lanterns at Halloween as a kid (much to the general mirth of the family, who think that's about the most country bumpkin-ish thing we've ever heard) - but it is in the interest of American (and other) manufacturers of chocolate, decorations, costumes etc. to rope as many people around the world into these things as they can. Add in all the American films, TV, and books and Halloween just becomes normal to the younger generations. Well, fun as it may be (and I don't begrudge anyone else celebrating it, nor am I saying that I am anti celebrating it myself) it's never been an important thing to me, and that's why I've never felt cheated out of growing up with Halloween.

(PS I feel I should say that I realise this might come off as anti-American - it's not meant to be, I respect you have your traditions and that Halloween isn't a purely American invention anyway, I'm just trying to explain my cultural perspective on things. Also, this isn't aimed at any specific person, I've just heard it a lot over the years that French people are missing out on Halloween, or I've missed out on Halloween, so this is just something to think about if at this time of year you're looking around you at the lack of Halloween celebrations here in France and thinking "oh those poor kids". It would suck to be the one kid out of everyone you know who's not participating, but if no-one is, I don't think you really care.)

Why France is not a workers' paradise, no matter what you may have heard

Today we all had to go to a 'laboratory council' to vote whether a technician working in our team should get 'titularisé' - that is, get a permanent (and in France, they really mean permanent) job or not. I found it really bizarre that one's colleagues have the right to vote on this. Basically, the procedure was that our team leader said a few words about his performance (he had left by this stage), then the head of department said a few words, and then we all cast a vote by secret ballot, which consisted of choosing amongst slips of paper reading 'Oui' 'Non' or blank and putting them in a box.

I was mortified when the results were read, because there were like 15 Ouis and one abstention, which was me, and now I feel guilty for abstaining and fearful that he'll somehow find out by a process of elimination that I was the abstainer. (So totally, writing about it on the internet is a great idea.)

Although I work in the same team with this guy, and I can say he's a really nice person, our paths don't really cross in a professional sense, so I didn't feel in a position to pass judgement on whether or not he was worthy of getting a 'post'. In fact, since I handle the English stuff, I'm quite often just working away in my little corner with not very much in common with everyone else, but that's even more true where this guy's concerned.

And if I'm brutally honest? The second reason I abstained is because I think it's unfair that he should get titularisation when no-one else in our team has it - we don't even have permanent contracts (I won't go bore you going into the differences between the two or why it is that he's able to get titularised while we can't). Not even our direct manager has a permanent contract. This guy is a grade or two below all of us, and the last person to join the team. And getting titularisation means all kinds of benefits, most of which I don't even know about - I assume there are health care and retirement benefits. What I do know is he gets 2 months' bonus salary every year. He's officially below us on the pay scale, and while I don't know by how much, I'm betting 2 months' extra salary means he'll now earn the same or more than I do. I have 2 Masters' degrees, he only has the Bac, and I'm doing a supposedly higher-level job.

I know I sound bitter and it's not this guy's fault how the system, or our particular workplace, operates, but it is like a kick in the pants. It honestly does make me wonder what the point is in staying in France where it seems not only are there zero chances for advancement or pay increases for me, but I don't even feel like I'm getting appropriately compensated if the only thing that matters is whether or not your employer decides to create a permanent job for you, not the work you do or the qualifications you have. After all, unlike most people I know, online and off, it's not like I have a boyfriend or any other significant tie keeping me here. Just an apartment full of expensive stuff I had to buy after getting screwed over by one of my only "friends". #Depressed.

Girl Gone Mild

Just posting about "Going Wild" - as Keith from the highly addictive A Taste of Garlic blog puts it - evidently exhausted me, since last week was very quiet. I did go out on Friday, but only round to a mate's where we drank wine and ate blinis and no-one Went Wild in the slightest. Is there possibly a "Girls Gone Mild" section I haven't noticed?

Actually (and this is 100% true) the most exciting event in my life last week was that I finally bought a dressing gown after discovering that Auchan sells ones that don't cost 40 €. Last night it was finally dry and ready to wear and I have therefore vowed to spend my winter thusly: 60% in bed, 30% in my dressing gown, 10% in my dressing gown making soup. Work may have something to say about me turning up in a giant blue dressing gown, but honestly it would be NO WORSE than what half of my colleagues actually do wear. So much for the French being chic.

As for the soup, I bought a big soup pot and a stick blender and I have decided I am going to spend the winter living off soup and beans and hot chocolate with Baileys in it (it's been a heady time for making decisions on how to spend the winter, I tells ya). I was going to start last night with the soup, but I forgot to buy onions and hence I was forced to eat a can of beans which were meant to go in the soup for dinner and they were surprisingly delicious. Hence why beans make the cut for my winter menu. I also had what I've decided to call une baguette éventrée, because everything sounds so much classier in French. This consists of fisting a baguette in order to extract its fluffy inner goodness, and then throwing the crust away. I confess this under conditions of strict anonymity, since I'm quite sure that if the French catch you in the act it's 10 years' imprisonment on Fort Boyard for you!

(By the way, if you think me talking about soup and dressing gowns and beans is too exciting for words, pity my poor mother who also got a whole email of me talking about soup and dressing gowns and beans.)

If you're anything like me, this weekend you failed to care that New Zealand won the Rugby World Cup. It did, however, give me the chance to smirk at some rugby-loving Frenchies, which is better than having rugby-loving Frenchies smirk at me, so it's all good. I did actually try to go and watch the final (and by 'watch', I mean 'not watch' while seizing the opportunity to drink cider at 10 am in the morning without people judging me). I was meant to meet up with some friends at The Pale, an Irish pub near the cathedral, but when I got there it was so packed that there were lines out both the doors with people standing on chairs in the street to try and get a view of the TVs. I hung around outside for a bit until I got a text that the people I was meant to meet had decided to go to Place Plumereau instead, which is about 10 minutes away. When I got there, however, I got another message saying everywhere was too full and they might be going to around the train station (in totally ANOTHER direction) but would text when they had found somewhere. I hung about for a bit then decided to walk towards the station, mostly because there is a place there that sells the best brioches in town and I thought I might have one for breakfast. When I got there, the brioche place was closed, I'd been wandering about for 45 minutes and still hadn't received a text, and so I decided to go home. Where I proceeded to not care about the rugby some more. (Actually, I was chatting to my friend Rick, who is American, on Skype, and he informed me of some of the rules of rugby – I thought you could only kick after a try, apparently this is incorrect. We mutually decided that an American explaining rugby to a New Zealander is probably a Portent of the Apocalypse, so if your week is disturbed by plague and pestilence and horsemen, you probably know who to blame.)

Then I had a nap with Bob (the cat) and woke up feeling like I had a hangover. Which is even Not Fairer than when I feel like I have a hangover after only a couple of glasses of wine, since not only had I not been drinking, I had in fact been THWARTED in my plans to drink before noon, which only goes to show that you may as well just get pissed in the morning and not care who's going to judge!

How to poison friends and put people under the influence

This happened about 6 weeks ago, but I was too busy dying of a terrible hangover to blog about it until now.

I had a few friends over for some drinks at my new apartment. We like nothing better than dressing up and drinking cocktails, thus the evening started out with what I'm going to call Kir Royales, but was actually Vouvray with syrup in it (totally the same thing), followed by Liz's famous Cosmopolitans (the secret seems to be burning some orange peel over the glass), followed by Gin Fizzes. A good time was had by all, and Liz and I decided to head out to a club we'd never tried before.

Ah, the days when I still had a tan! Liz was convinced I'd set the camera up in the wrong position and all that we'd get was her arm.

Liz, Laetitia and me

By this time, I was pretty drunk to be honest, and decided it would be a fabulous idea to do some shots of the vodka I brought back from Ukraine with me. Remember that vodka? It got me into a polite debate with the airport security, then I had to go check it in with the help of a nice German lad who gave me some free newspapers to stuff around it in the plastic bag. I primarily bought this particular vodka because it came in two varieties with three 'free' shot glasses. I'm not sure whether that's what gave me the bright idea of doing shots, since in general I'm not really massive on shots, particularly not shots of vodka.

Laetitia and Liz were also a bit dubious about doing shots (I'm not sure honestly why Laetitia agreed, since she wasn't coming out to the club with us) but I managed to persuade them by telling them it was honey vodka. What could be nicer than a shot of honey vodka? Genuine, Eastern Bloc honey vodka! Nom nom nom! Smooth as silk! Good for what ails ya!

Well... turns out this vodka was just about the burniest, harshest firewater I've ever tasted (and I was recently persuaded to try rakia). I put the shot glass down mightily regretting that I'd poured myself a shot twice the size of the girls'.

But it wasn't until a few minutes later that Liz held up the bottle and we discovered just why this vodka was so evil:

Yep, that's a giant chili pepper right there! I can't believe I managed to purchase, transport, unpack and serve this vodka all without ever noticing the horror lurking within! It's not exactly invisible! In my defence, it does *say* honey on the label, but it says it in the tiny letters right underneath where it says PEPPER (Pertseva, but in Cyrillic obviously) in big letters. I assume I saw this strange word written really big, didn't know what it meant, decided that logically if I didn't know what it meant than it must be unimportant, and then forgot about it. I can tell you, I got much abuse the next day from the girls as the effects made themselves felt, but it didn't make much difference since I was already dying from the evil chili hangover anyway! (Obviously the wine, gin, cointreau and normal vodka had nothing to do with it - it was all that damn chili's fault!)

And when we got to the club everyone there was at least 5-10 years younger than us, at least in the downstairs bit. (The club featured "two ambiances" - downstairs, which was a normal club, and upstairs which was full of couples slowdancing at 3 in the morning for some reason.) These dickish young guys tried chatting us up - in French - and one of them said to the other one right in front of me that you could see the whole of my boobs (which was NOT true, as the photo evidence above attests). And then when I called him out on it, he said he said it because he thought I wouldn't understand the word (nichons, which is slang). Um, saying rude things in front of me because you think I won't understand you makes you even more of a dick? And is pretty stupid, since we've been having an entire conversation in French up to this point. Then one of them asked if Liz would be upset if he undid her bra (she had on a backless dress and you could see the clasp). Sigh, why are the only people who go out in this godforsaken town under the age of 21? Safe to say that was as close as they ever manage to get to nichons!

A disappointing weekend and a stroll by the Loire

Last time I posted, I mentioned my friend Amber was coming to visit. Amber is a fellow librarian with a special place in my heart since she once made me Eggs Benedict when I was badly hungover. She then forced me to watch the Home and Away Omnibus, but I suppose nobody's perfect. Even though she was only scheduled to be here from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, I took both Friday and Monday off work (for house-cleaning and hangover recovery purposes). Sadly, though, just as I was thinking about getting up on Friday morning, I got a message that she couldn't find her passport, and thus the trip was off. Bummer :( Especially because, although Friday morning started off horribly, it subsequently cleared up and we've had nothing but blue skies and sunshine since then. So I was left all of a sudden with a 4-day weekend and nothing to do...

I decided I wanted to do something with my day off anyway, so I headed to the movies to see We Need to Talk About Kevin. I couldn't help constantly comparing it to the book (I don't want to give anything away, but let's just say I thought the psychological aspects and the build-up to the ending were better handled in the book) but it was pretty good, although the succession of 30-second scenes was a bit irritating, especially early on. It really was a different story than the book, not because they changed anything material in the plot, but just because of the nature of film and certain choices in how the story was told. After that, I went and had a pint (of cider) at an Irish pub and watched the world go by. Lots of tourists about! I was down by the cathedral, where I don't normally spend a lot of time, so I don't see tourists all that much usually. I would have thought the season was finished, but I suppose you've got the people like me who don't like travelling in peak season so much.

On Saturday I met up with Marion the kiwi to check out some French classes I'd heard about. She doesn't speak a word of French, so she has been looking for classes and I asked around and found this voluntary association that gives classes for only a 36 euro annual membership fee. Amazing! They are aimed at helping immigrants integrate into French society - to be able to pass exams in the hope of getting into university or getting a job. I have been slack as in terms of studying French. It's been 9 years since I've taken classes, and to be honest, other than living here I do absolutely nothing to improve. I have improved nonetheless, but I know there are still plenty of gaps and grammar I've forgotten or never properly learnt. So I thought I might as well check it out as well, and although I'm not sure how committed I'll be to 4 hours of fairly disorganised classes with a wide range of levels jammed together on a Saturday afternoon, at 36 euros you can't go far wrong.

On Sunday, I set my alarm for 7 am to watch the Formula One race. I have much more commitment when it comes to getting up early for F1 than I do for work! Unfortunately though, I woke up feeling sick after only 2 glasses of wine the night before. If there's one thing I hate, it's a hangover without having even had a proper night out. If I'm going to be sick anyway, I may as well have been out drinking cocktails and making a fool of myself. So anyway, I ended up watching a few laps and then going back to sleep and watching the replay later. Okay race, a good fight between Webber and Hamilton in particular, but not a classic. If you'll permit me to talk motorsport for 1 more minute, it was sad to see news of the death of a British IndyCar driver, Dan Wheldon, this weekend. F1 is the only motorsport I watch, but I saw news footage of this, and it's just a waste. I couldn't help thinking, "why was that fatal? Why was his car on fire?" Say what you will about F1, it has really become incredibly safe compared to the past, and apparently compared to other types of motorsport. Compare it with a crash like Robert Kubica's in Montreal in 2007 or Mark Webber flipping his car in Valencia in 2010 and you see how safe F1 really is (Kubica had to go to hospital, but no-one was badly hurt in either of these incidents). Sadly, Kubica has actually been out all season after badly injuring himself rallying in the F1 off-season. Fingers crossed he makes it back into F1 soon, he had so much potential.

Then today, I thought I should also do something worthwhile with my day off, and decided to go for a long walk on the banks of the Loire. I used to go for walks all the time in Nice, but a combination of having less spare time, the bus routes being terrible in the countryside round here (don't want to walk for hours and then there be no bus back for 2 hours) and there not being any scenery quite as lovely as the Cote d'Azur in these parts means that I haven't really done it here. But today I had a very nice walk in about 18 degree sunny weather along the Loire to just after Rochecorbon (about 5 miles according to Google. I'm not sure why it's suddenly in miles. Apparently that's around 8 km in sensible units of measure). Then a less pleasant walk part of the way back on the main road (due to the bus situation).


Presumably the 13th century fortified farm I saw a sign for


Pont Wilson (as in Woodrow)


The library and cathedral viewed from Pont Wilson


A church on the north bank of the Loire


Some autumn colour on the banks of the Loire

Reims videos

I tried to post these with the post below (a thrill-a-minute account of days 2 and 3 in Reims, don't miss it!) but it wasn't working properly for some reason. Anyway, here are some very short videos of the light show at the cathedral. Unfortunately, now I have uploaded them, I realise you can hardly see anything (on my computer, they look a lot clearer and they are also rotated the right way up). So, they weren't great to begin with and they are even less impressive posted here. But anyway, I've uploaded them now, so if you want to get a very vague idea of it, it will only take up about 1 minute total to watch all of them. If you don't have that long, #5 is probably the best.