Immigration

Recall the rainy, galely days of early October. Rain spatters the windows as we carefully collate papers: application form, signed and validated photographs, employment history, Postal Order for one hundred pounds. It all goes into a big envelope which Clare carefully weighs on the kitchen scales. A "Large" stamp is affixed and off the package goes, addressed to the Canadian Embassy.

Fast forward to the last couple of weeks - Adrian waits for the email confirming his work permit. His friends get theirs but he hears nothing. The Embassy does not encourage phone enquiries; travel to his snowboarding instructor job at Sun Peaks is on indefinite hold.

Monday we get a package. Correction: it is the original package, returned to sender. According to the legend on the envelope, the Royal Mail determined there was 20 pence excess postage to pay on the package to which they added a one pound 'handling fee'. Naturally, the Embassy declined to pay. The papers have been in the Royal Mail system for two months now, wending their slow way back to us via Belfast and a mis-delivery to Wookey Hole.

We were of course mortified, taking some blame for this debacle. Adrian was more sanguine, immediately booking a flight to Calgary (the immigration staff like snowboarders there, he said), determined to negotiate his way in at the border. How confident are you, I asked. 80-90% came his reply, as he clutched a folder thick with the returned documents.

I got an email last night at midnight. Immigration - the granting of his precious work permit - had been easy, but getting the free WiFi at the airport pub to load had been a pig.

Gut flora

Not fauna, because apparently the denizens of our guts are - as bacteria - lumped in with the plants.

I have today what is euphemistically termed a 'stomach upset'. It's left me tired and rather sick .. I'm blaming exposure to dodgy members of the public at IKEA yesterday, where we bought frames for our Musee d'Orsay prints. (Update: I think it's the norovirus bug).

A small footnote on the zero-carb concept (protein and fat only, as in the 'paleo-diet'). This can starve our trillions of gut-symbiotes, good as well as bad, so is not too cute a strategy. Intermittent fasting is consistent with 500 calories of carbohydrates on the 'non-eating' day.

The Untouchable (John Banville)

This is John Banville's cerebral, psychological exploration of the character of Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, Poussin expert and Soviet spy. I'm about a third of the way through this novel and as always in thrall to Banville's writing and acute analysis of his characters' states of mind.

May I sound like a fortune-teller? A much-awaited return to Canada is mooted, but not in circumstances predicted. More later ... and who would have thought an essential part of the carry-on baggage of a thirty-something snowboarding instructor is two Terabytes of USB hard disk capacity?

Immortality is getting harder. Think of all the educated people of the world (at a particular time) filling a circular stadium. In one direction we rank the mathematicians, in another the novelists, in a third the singers and musicians, and so on. The best of the best are out on the periphery and only one or two people per generation - those on the extreme circumference - will be destined for cultural immortality.

The ratio of circumference to area is inversely proportional to the population of the stadium: generations pass, civilization expands and the competition gets ever more severe; immortality gets harder.  (I feel I'm channelling Banville's hero Victor Maskell here ..).

Intermittent fasting: month 4

Another month ... and another six pounds lighter.

Date	Stone	Lb	Pounds	Kg	D(Lb)
07/08/2012	13	8	190	86.4	Start
08/09/2012	12	13	181	82.3	9
06/10/2012	12	7	175	79.5	6
08/11/2012	11	12	166	75.5	9
08/12/2012	11	6	160	72.7	6

This is now month four of intermittent fasting - a scheme whereby three days a week I restrict my calories to around 500 (the normal male requirement is around 2,500 per day). The point of this, as explained in previous months, is to persuade the body to move from 'go-go' mode into cellular-repair mode, with consequent health benefits. Also, of course, because I have been historically overweight.

My belt is a few notches in, my jeans are rather hanging off me and my abdomen has contracted. Losing c. 6 pounds per month is not a process which can be carried through indefinitely - I would guess I have about another six or seven pounds to go. While we were in Paris a few days ago I was checking the torsos of the classical sculptures at the Louvre to see just what the perfect stomach is meant to look like :-).

Should be there by my birthday in January, providing Christmas doesn't blow the whole process apart!

Last impressions of Paris

Here in the Eurostar departure lounge .. a chance for some final Parisian thoughts.

The cars in Paris - they're parked incredibly close, packed together with maybe three inches between them at the side of the road. How do they ever get out? How did they ever get in?

Warm air vents on the pavement, outside apartment blocks. Many are claimed by fifty-something homeless men, carefully guarding a bottle of cheap wine. How do you keep doing that, when the freezing rain is gently settling on the streets?

We ate out every evening and the food was occasionally fantastic, mostly ok but sometimes the meat was tough and fatty,  the salads had lost their crispness. The French are coasting and the brits have finally caught up.

Update: on the train now and it's first class on the return trip - wide seats and space for the legs. Let's get going and we'll use the last of our Euros in the refreshments carriage!

Later ... an innocent abroad. I was dispatched to the buffet car where I waited 20 minutes in a queue composed of French people who wanted complicated things and lots of them. Eventually I returned with a large tea, a hot chocolate and a muffin.

In my absence the magic of first class had exerted itself. My tray table was adorned with salmon and guacamole, spiced rice and a glistening apple confection. The complimentary first class meal was rounded off with wine. Confronted by incredibly competent and self-effacing waiters, I hid the muffin.

Impressionism at the Musee d'Orsay

Some think Impressionism is the chocolate-box art of the kitsch-loving nouveau middle-classes. Moi, I love it. Seeing original paintings - pieces I have only seen on computer screens and tv sets - by Cezanne, Pisarro, Sisley, Gauguin, van Gogh, Degas, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec .. brings a special kind of emotional excitement. I could have stayed a lot longer.

In fact one is defendu from taking pictures in the museum. Clare retaliated by buying a number of posters and prints, some of which feature in the collage below. The museum also provides a fine view north of Sacre Coeur (pictured) and has a good cafe up on the fifth floor, abutting the old station clock (pictured).

English in Paris

Despite the best efforts of the Academie, English insidiously infiltrates the culture of Paris. Billboards shriek out "Etes-vous 4G ready?" (what happened to pret)? Business types are exhorted to "devenez un business leader!"  What happened to chef d'entreprise?

The most amusing thing is when English people meet other brits and, mistaking them for the French, engage with polite franglais. Yesterday we called the lift to go down to the street level of our hotel. The doors opened and in that special accent we love so much, the portly, fifty-something gentleman wearing a mac gave us a rueful smile and said "Je monte." He then climbed to the fifth floor as we waited for the ascenseur to come back down again. Quelle joie!

The Louvre

We entered the Louvre from the Rue de Rivoli and spent the next few hours wandering at random between paintings and sculptures. There are also classic Paris vistas from the upper storey windows - see pix below.

The Louvre gift shop was a disappointment. We had been hoping for some distinctive posters but it was the familiar few items led by the Mona Lisa - kitsch-art in fact. We hope for better at the Musee d'Orsay tomorrow.

Now back at the hotel for an afternoon rest (Clare shown snacking below). The hotel has given us free WiFi (from Orange), and amazingly this worked in the Louvre restaurant as well as at a cafe in the Ile de la Cite.

Frogs' Legs

Yesterday I mentioned our evening meal starter was cuisses des grenouilles, which I haven't had before. I guess I was expecting a pile of leg muscles, suitably cooked. Instead, as Clare shows in the picture, you get the recognisable lower half of the frog: in fact six or seven of them, with salad.

Ad they still have the - very brittle - bone inside, it's impossible to eat them with knife and fork. It's a case of pick them up and devour them .. sticky fingers!

The taste is bland, not a million kilometres from chicken, and it's wise not to dwell on the normal diet of the frog.

I write this at breakfast, using the hotel WiFi - onwards to the Louvre!

Eurostar; Latin Quarter

We're in a wintry Paris, conveyed by Eurostar. The process at St Pancras is more plane than train: there's the X-ray of luggage, the passport control and in our case the complete unpacking of our suitcase by Customs.

We ate out this evening in a restaurant (pictured with grocer's apostrophe) in the Latin Quarter, close to our hotel. My brother-in-law Gerry was in town with daughter Jane and we met up for the meal. Frog's legs were on the menu - Clare's seemed a bit skittish.

A frosting-over Paris is notable for drunks lying on the freezing pavement (seen going and still there coming back) and electric cars recharging from pavement-edge pedestals.