At 9.15 this morning the power went off. We had a letter about 4 weeks ago telling us the power would be off from 8.30am ’til 12 noon, so that a high tension power cable could be replaced. Being a very organised sort of chap, I put the letter in a safe place and then forgot all about it. Imagine my surprise this morning, as I was happily typing away and then ….. *%>*”<}* …. a blank screen.
This was not our first power cut by any means, but I was still left with a sense of loss. I read for a while but then my agitation got so bad that I decided to do some much needed tidying of the book shelves. I managed to spend a couple of hours on the task and finished just in time for the power to return.
After 30 minutes of being back online my shakes stopped and my blood pressure returned to normal 
A Random Photo Moment
A Horse in the riverbed in front of our house.
Just Finished Reading
A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson
An excellent story that weaves war time Lisbon and current day Lisbon and the events that unite the story. A cracking read and gives both a vivid sense of time and place.
Amazon Review
In A Small Death in Lisbon, the narrative switches back and forth between 1941 and 1999, and Wilson’s wide knowledge of history and keen sense of place make the eras equally vibrant. In 1941 Germany, Klaus Felsen, an industrialist, is approached by the SS high command in a none-too-friendly manner and is “persuaded” to go to Lisbon and oversee the sale–or smuggling–of wolfram (also known as tungsten, used in the manufacture of tanks and airplanes). World War II Portugal is neutral where business is concerned, and too much of the precious metal is being sold to Britain when Germany needs it to insure that Hitler’s blitzkrieg is successful.
Cut to 1999 Lisbon, where the daughter of a prominent lawyer has been found dead on a beach. Ze Coehlo, a liberal police inspector who is a widower with a daughter of his own, must sift through the life of Catarina Oliviera and discover why she was so brutally murdered. Her father is enigmatic, her mother suicidal; her friends were rock musicians and drug addicts.
The reader is treated to a wonderful portrait of Lisbon in the aftermath of the 1974 revolution that ousted Salazar from power, and the scars from that conflict are still close to the surface for the citizens of Lisbon, including Coehlo and his colleagues. We also see World War II in a slightly different manner from that to which we are accustomed–through the eyes of the Germans and the Portuguese. The pace of the book is leisurely but compelling as the events of 1941 and those in 1999 merge in an extraordinary climax.
About the Author
Robert Wilson was born in 1957. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked in shipping, advertising, and trading in Africa. He has traveled in Asia and Africa and has lived in Greece and West Africa. He is married and writes from an isolated farmhouse in Portugal
Tags: Robert Wilson
French automaker Renault posted a huge loss of 2.71 billion euros in the first half of 2009 but said the outlook was improving. In the first half of 2008, in contrast, the company reported a net profit of 1.58 billion euros.
Renault: Des résultats en-dessous des estimations.
Renault accuse une perte de 2,7 Milliards d’euros
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is back to business as usual following his collapse over the weekend while jogging, and has made his first public appearance at a ministerial meeting on Wednesday.
Tags: Nicolas Sarkozy
A thousand hot air balloons commandeeered by afficionados from 42 nations are currently taking part in the world’s biggest hot air balloon festival that takes place every year in eastern France. This year, they set the record for the most number of balloons launched at the same time when 329 took to the sky.
With Catholic churches in France struggling to fill the pews, the Bordaux area seems to have found an unlikely saviour — in the form of a sizeable English expat community. A “special relationship” means that 12 churches are allowing Anglican priests to hold services in Catholic churches. Despite some local consternation at seeing women priests, these congregations say they’re helping inter-faith dialogue — and proving there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever Church of England.
During the summer months in Paris, the river police squad is busier than usual. The beach-like “Paris Plages” installation along the banks of the Seine means there more tourists and locals near the water — and more need for police action.
I’m now in full summer mode. Off came the hair the other day. Instant Air conditioning for the bonce and a weight off of my mind! Now all I need to remember is to cover my old noggin with a liberal amount of sun lotion, otherwise I will end up looking like Mr Beetroot Head.
If only there was a pill I could take at the start of summer that would get rid of all of my body hair with the exception on a bit of stubble on my head and my eye brows, I would be a happy chappy.
I could sell this to a toupee maker!
Just finished reading
Wings of Fire by Dale Brown
Wings of Fire by Dale Brown
This a a romper stomper of an action novel. Dale is the master of aviation action fiction which a keen eye for detail and well rounded character who bring substance to the plot. If you are not bothered by it be far fetch and the odd bit of weak plotting and are after a action adventure novel then this is a good enough book.
Product Description
North Africa is in turmoil. The new Libyan president has had the new Egyptian president assassinated, and the latter’s widow, Susan Salaam, vows revenge. She enlists the high-tech help of Air Force general Patrick McClanahan and his Night Stalkers. But the Libyans, and their scheming secret allies, hold a trump card-one with a deeply personal meaning for McClanahan-and it may be one that will leave even the Night Stalkers powerless
About the Author
Former US Air Force captain Dale Brown was born in Buffalo, New York. He was still serving in the US Air Force, where he was a navigator-bombardier, when he wrote his first thriller, Flight of the Old Dog. His most recent novels are The Tin Man, Battle Born and Warrior Class.
Tags: Linda la Plant
A jubilant Alberto Contador claimed his second Tour de France yellow jersey in Paris on Sunday, as thousands of onlookers gathered on the Champs Elysees to catch a glimpse of the champions.
From AFP
From CNN
CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta talks with Lance Armstrong about placing third in the Tour de France.
Even more videos.
Tags: Alberto Contador, Tour de France
A British grandmother is being pursued by France for a crime she was convicted of in her absence 20 years ago.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is being examined by doctors after he started to feel unwell while exercising.
From ITN
From AP
Tags: Nicolas Sarkozy
A pilot took off from Calais on Saturday morning in an ancient monoplane to cross the English Channel and so commemorate the first such crossing one century ago.
Tags: Louis Bleriot
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draftsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an oeuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern and sometimes decadent life of those times. Toulouse-Lautrec is known along with Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin as one of the greatest painters of the Post-Impressionist period. In a 2005 auction at Christie’s auction house a new record was set when “La blanchisseuse”, an early painting of a young laundress, sold for $22.4 million U.S.
Portrait of Monsieur Delaporte at the Jardin de Paris, 1893
Throughout his career, which spanned less than 20 years, Toulouse-Lautrec created 737 canvases, 275 watercolors, 363 prints and posters, 5,084 drawings, some ceramic and stained glass work, and an unknown number of lost works. His debt to the Impressionists, in particular the more figurative painters Manet and Degas, is apparent. His style was also influenced by the classical Japanese woodprints which became popular in art circles in Paris. In the works of Toulouse-Lautrec can be seen many parallels to Manet’s detached barmaid at A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and the behind-the-scenes ballet dancers of Degas. He excelled at capturing people in their working environment, with the colour and the movement of the gaudy night-life present, but the glamour stripped away. He was masterly at capturing crowd scenes in which the figures are highly individualised. At the time that they were painted, the individual figures in his larger paintings could be identified by silhouette alone, and the names of many of these characters have been recorded. His treatment of his subject matter, whether as portraits, scenes of Parisian night-life, or intimate studies, has been described as both sympathetic and dispassionate.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s skilled depiction of people relied on his painterly style which is highly linear and gives great emphasis to contour. He often applied the paint in long, thin brushstrokes which would often leave much of the board on which they are painted showing through. Many of his works may best be described as drawings in coloured paint.
Tags: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Wide swathes of southern Europe are struggling to contain summer fires stoked by high temperatures and high winds. Firefighters are battling flames on the French island of Corsica, where two villages near the southern city of Ajaccio were evacuated on Thursday.
I’ve never seen a 3 legged pig, but there must be an abundance of them here in France. You only ever see pigs trotters for sale in packs of 3, or large single trotters. I wonder if the pigs have been genetically modified, or are they just very clumsy and break a leg when they are piglets which they need to have amputated? Or maybe they cut off 3 trotters when the pig is young and then let it grow to full size before sending the one legged pig off to the abattoir.
Just Finished Reading
White Death ((The Numa Files)) by Clive Cussler
White Death (The Numa Files) by Clive Cussler
A classic Cussler novel with all the standard ingredients. It is very far fetched, but good fun and entertaining.
Amazon Review
There is something blithely inventive about White Death that is unusual in this mildly macho thriller about professional hard men doing their thing. The book starts with two preludes–one about Basques fleeing the Inquisition with relics, another about Nazi aeronauts coming to grief in the Arctic–and almost at once skitters off to deal with the heroic Karl Austin rescuing Danish sailors from a sunken cruiser. Apparently, the cruiser was sunk by the anti-whaling activists its crew was trying to arrest, but Austin, charmed by one of them, rapidly proves not all was as it seems. Meanwhile, other friends of his are investigating the death of a fisherman who had told them about giant hungry salmon in Canada… This is an up to the moment thriller that speculates intelligently about the biotech business, and inventively about the nature of nationhood and what men will do for the people they regard proprietorially as theirs. Austin in particular is the focus of nail-biting action and suspense sequences whether racing through sea caves, dog sledding through New York or sword fighting in a Zeppelin.
About the Author
Clive Cussler is the author or coauthor of twenty-eight previous books, most recently the Dirk Pitt adventure Black Wind; the Numa Files novel Lost City; and the Oregon adventure Sacred Stone. Cussler divides his time between Colorado and Arizona Paul Kemprecos has coauthored the NUMA Files novels Serpent, Blue Gold, Fire Ice, White Death and Lost City. He lives in Massachusetts.
Tags: Clive Cussler, Trotters
Pharmacies in France begin distributing face masks on Thursday for patients with flu symptoms as the French government ramps up its fight against the A(H1N1) influenza virus. The country has so far been spared the worst of the pandemic fallout, but health officials are bracing for an influx of contagion as tourists flood in to Paris.
Tags: Paris, swine flu
