Hame agaaayne!
I think someone thinks I'm a Manchurian Candidate because I keep getting these bizarre messages in my junk mail folder (in between the insurance scams and porn passwords). Today it looked like this:
Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going. -Christopher Darlington Morley (1890-1957) aye
Then came THE PARENT. (Now, you need to know, I love the parents of the children I teach.) This parent arrived on the scene with her son who had Down?s Syndrome. She wanted a piece of software with REAL photos, one on each screen with the word in text and the word spoken aloud. I looked at her and thought to myself, ?B-O-R-I-N-G. The child will NEVER respond to that.? cacomorphia
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. -Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778) bichromatize
Doesn't Kate's granddaughter miss shaving for a few months? aration
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. W. Edwards Deming casking
Have you hated surfing lately? acanthophorous>
I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but I have a real desire to go kill Mary McAleese... Jesus! I was only joking! Stop pointing that gun at my head!!!!
*phew*
Yes... I'm back in the land of turf and wet damp things. I'm having a little trouble adjusting to all the newness of the old things I'm so used to but no longer recognise. That's a bit mad altogether.
Anyway... What you really want to know is, "What happened to Stephen and Sarah after they left Barcelona?" OK, I'll tell you.
On the way back home we decided to take in the Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres. I've been wanting to visit that place for years and years now and I was a little miffed when Maebh got there before me (I was born first, dammit! I was appreciatin' surrealism while you were still worrying about whether or not teddy got the same amount of tea as dolly at the imaginary bad-catter's picnic!)... But, justifiable resentment aside, it was great to be there. The place is truly a marvel to behold, and easy to get lost in. I saw some works which were familiar to me and many which were not. I had to laugh at people looking round the sections of non-Dali stuff discussing (loudly) how this period in The Master's life was beset by uncertainty about the future of his blahblahblah. I'm sure he would've found that amusing. Or maybe he would've slapped the buggers with his moustache. You just never know with Spaniards...
After that, Sarah and I took the night train back to Gaye Paree. We decided to splash out on real beds and everything was going fine until some guy ended up sharing our cabinand Sarah got drunk and homesick. There was not much sleeping done and I think it's the closest I've ever been to leaping from a moving train just for a little peace and quiet! Still, we made it to Gare Austerlitz and staggered off to McDonald's for coffee and orange juice.
A funny thing about McDoFrance, it's not quite as depressing as the ones here. There aren't so many hollow eyed people who look exactly the way you would imagine people at rock-bottom would. It's all rather sophistimicated with laptop spaces and (I think) Wi-Fi.
The first order of business in Paris was finding a roof. We decided the Sorbonne area was bound to have cheap places (students, cheap, go together like peaches and cream). We found one which was very nice and had facilities out the wazoo, but which we had to mount 5 flights of stairs to reach the room in. The man was careful not to mention this to us at the time we were handing over money.
That day, after a nap, we went to Montmartre. I'd already been and seen most stuff, but I knew Sarah'd like it. She was amazed by all the artists hanging around like drug dealers (Pst! Wanna buy a landscape?) and I reckon she could do the same stuff. When I suggested it I was reminded how long it takes her to draw things. Sitting outside Notre Dame I was dismayed to observe her take an hour to draw a hedge. It was a very nice hedge, but it was an hour-long hedge of about 1 inch square...
The next day was the Musée D'Orsay, which Sarah had been foiled in attempts to enter on two occasions. The first time had been a Monday, on which the M d'O is uniquely closed. Everywhere else closes on a Tuesday, strangely enough. And the second time the queue had been about three years long. This time we waltzed in early and I wondered what I was doing there.
We split up and I went upstairs to look at some ballerinas painted by Degas and some drunk society people painted by Lautrec and some crazy Dutch guy painted by Van Gogh. I'm not saying it wasn't nice and all, but I get a bit fed up of impressionism after a while. It just looks to me like the painter left his fine brushes and/or his glasses at home. And don't even get me started on Gauguin, feckin' paedo that he was...
There were some amazing works there, although I'm sure they were completely wasted on my philistine eyes. I spent two hours sitting down, scribbling in my note book while waiting for Sarah to finish analysing brushstrokes.
The next day we met up with Ian and Hugh and went to Disneyland. I was determined not to enjoy it, disgusting symbol of American high-consumerism that it is. But as soon as I walked through the gates and handed over a huge sum of money I found my soul immediately lifted by the sheer strangeness of the place. It's so very painstaking in it's detail that I couldn't help but be impressed...
We managed to put Sarah on rollercoasters after much persuading and bullying. She's such a big 'fraidy cat that we were certain she'd bolt at the last minute, but she surprised us all by hopping into Space Mountain after downing a bottle of Back's Rescue Remedy. The thing set off, it went up and down and around and around and upside down and glow-in-the-dark things flashed past us and it was all very thrilling until it stopped and Sarah turned to the three of us and said, "Dead, dead, dead... All of you! That was brilliant, can we go on another one?!"
So, a new adrenaline junkie was born and we found all the biggest and scariest rides and went on them all.
At the end of the day we saw the parade, which was amazing, and we slumped onto the train all agreeing it had been Too Much Fun Altogether and nothing would ever live up to it.
The next day Sarah and I left Paris for the Netherlands in order to go home. We were, by this stage, thoroughly sick of foreign food, foreign hotels and foreigners themselves were starting to lose their shine.
We had hoped to get an earlier ferry and get home a day earlier than booked, but when we finally made it to the ferryport (after a terrifying stop in Rotterdam where I smoked something incredibly strong in one of the 'local' coffeeshops and Sarah was on the verge of calling an ambulance...) we discovered there was no earlier ferry and so we bedded down in our sleeping bags in the doorway to wait for the trains to start up again.
It was not much fun.
The next day we went to Breda and had breakfast before returning to Hoek van Holland and hanging around to wait for the boat. When we arrived in England, THAT is when things got really bad...
To be continued (when I have the time, energy and mental stamina to relate the harrowing events in their entirety)...
Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going. -Christopher Darlington Morley (1890-1957) aye
Then came THE PARENT. (Now, you need to know, I love the parents of the children I teach.) This parent arrived on the scene with her son who had Down?s Syndrome. She wanted a piece of software with REAL photos, one on each screen with the word in text and the word spoken aloud. I looked at her and thought to myself, ?B-O-R-I-N-G. The child will NEVER respond to that.? cacomorphia
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. -Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778) bichromatize
Doesn't Kate's granddaughter miss shaving for a few months? aration
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. W. Edwards Deming casking
Have you hated surfing lately? acanthophorous>
I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but I have a real desire to go kill Mary McAleese... Jesus! I was only joking! Stop pointing that gun at my head!!!!
*phew*
Yes... I'm back in the land of turf and wet damp things. I'm having a little trouble adjusting to all the newness of the old things I'm so used to but no longer recognise. That's a bit mad altogether.
Anyway... What you really want to know is, "What happened to Stephen and Sarah after they left Barcelona?" OK, I'll tell you.
On the way back home we decided to take in the Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres. I've been wanting to visit that place for years and years now and I was a little miffed when Maebh got there before me (I was born first, dammit! I was appreciatin' surrealism while you were still worrying about whether or not teddy got the same amount of tea as dolly at the imaginary bad-catter's picnic!)... But, justifiable resentment aside, it was great to be there. The place is truly a marvel to behold, and easy to get lost in. I saw some works which were familiar to me and many which were not. I had to laugh at people looking round the sections of non-Dali stuff discussing (loudly) how this period in The Master's life was beset by uncertainty about the future of his blahblahblah. I'm sure he would've found that amusing. Or maybe he would've slapped the buggers with his moustache. You just never know with Spaniards...
After that, Sarah and I took the night train back to Gaye Paree. We decided to splash out on real beds and everything was going fine until some guy ended up sharing our cabinand Sarah got drunk and homesick. There was not much sleeping done and I think it's the closest I've ever been to leaping from a moving train just for a little peace and quiet! Still, we made it to Gare Austerlitz and staggered off to McDonald's for coffee and orange juice.
A funny thing about McDoFrance, it's not quite as depressing as the ones here. There aren't so many hollow eyed people who look exactly the way you would imagine people at rock-bottom would. It's all rather sophistimicated with laptop spaces and (I think) Wi-Fi.
The first order of business in Paris was finding a roof. We decided the Sorbonne area was bound to have cheap places (students, cheap, go together like peaches and cream). We found one which was very nice and had facilities out the wazoo, but which we had to mount 5 flights of stairs to reach the room in. The man was careful not to mention this to us at the time we were handing over money.
That day, after a nap, we went to Montmartre. I'd already been and seen most stuff, but I knew Sarah'd like it. She was amazed by all the artists hanging around like drug dealers (Pst! Wanna buy a landscape?) and I reckon she could do the same stuff. When I suggested it I was reminded how long it takes her to draw things. Sitting outside Notre Dame I was dismayed to observe her take an hour to draw a hedge. It was a very nice hedge, but it was an hour-long hedge of about 1 inch square...
The next day was the Musée D'Orsay, which Sarah had been foiled in attempts to enter on two occasions. The first time had been a Monday, on which the M d'O is uniquely closed. Everywhere else closes on a Tuesday, strangely enough. And the second time the queue had been about three years long. This time we waltzed in early and I wondered what I was doing there.
We split up and I went upstairs to look at some ballerinas painted by Degas and some drunk society people painted by Lautrec and some crazy Dutch guy painted by Van Gogh. I'm not saying it wasn't nice and all, but I get a bit fed up of impressionism after a while. It just looks to me like the painter left his fine brushes and/or his glasses at home. And don't even get me started on Gauguin, feckin' paedo that he was...
There were some amazing works there, although I'm sure they were completely wasted on my philistine eyes. I spent two hours sitting down, scribbling in my note book while waiting for Sarah to finish analysing brushstrokes.
The next day we met up with Ian and Hugh and went to Disneyland. I was determined not to enjoy it, disgusting symbol of American high-consumerism that it is. But as soon as I walked through the gates and handed over a huge sum of money I found my soul immediately lifted by the sheer strangeness of the place. It's so very painstaking in it's detail that I couldn't help but be impressed...
We managed to put Sarah on rollercoasters after much persuading and bullying. She's such a big 'fraidy cat that we were certain she'd bolt at the last minute, but she surprised us all by hopping into Space Mountain after downing a bottle of Back's Rescue Remedy. The thing set off, it went up and down and around and around and upside down and glow-in-the-dark things flashed past us and it was all very thrilling until it stopped and Sarah turned to the three of us and said, "Dead, dead, dead... All of you! That was brilliant, can we go on another one?!"
So, a new adrenaline junkie was born and we found all the biggest and scariest rides and went on them all.
At the end of the day we saw the parade, which was amazing, and we slumped onto the train all agreeing it had been Too Much Fun Altogether and nothing would ever live up to it.
The next day Sarah and I left Paris for the Netherlands in order to go home. We were, by this stage, thoroughly sick of foreign food, foreign hotels and foreigners themselves were starting to lose their shine.
We had hoped to get an earlier ferry and get home a day earlier than booked, but when we finally made it to the ferryport (after a terrifying stop in Rotterdam where I smoked something incredibly strong in one of the 'local' coffeeshops and Sarah was on the verge of calling an ambulance...) we discovered there was no earlier ferry and so we bedded down in our sleeping bags in the doorway to wait for the trains to start up again.
It was not much fun.
The next day we went to Breda and had breakfast before returning to Hoek van Holland and hanging around to wait for the boat. When we arrived in England, THAT is when things got really bad...
To be continued (when I have the time, energy and mental stamina to relate the harrowing events in their entirety)...
posted by Stephen McMullin at 1:40 pm
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