We all got together last night and watched the video of the Sound of Music that Emiline lent me yesterday. I can truthfully say that, while I have not seen this film for about 38 years, I remembered near most all of it. (This was probably helped by, when very young and influencable, having worn out an LP of the film—the one with Julie Andrews throwing guitar and carpet bag to opposite sides of the disk while trampling the eidelweiss in some austrian mountain meadow—and wearing Barbie pink? he asks in astonishment having just searched for album covers on the net… I would have sworn that it was doudy blue/grey. Just goes to show).

Kim seemed to love the film.

It was a lot longer that I rememebered. This was compounded by the fact that the editing was very slow in comparaison to more contempoarary fare. There were also some curious editing jumps in the beginning scenes (I don’t think that these were repairs in the film as there was no corresponding jump in the soundtrack and that overall the film quality was good.)
The other thing that was really, really strange was when suddenly—cue romantic closeup—and everything went fuzzy.
Yes, they don’t make films like that anymore.

. . . . .
Seeing the Von Trapp family parading around their gardens flinging arms and legs around in gay abandon, Ludivine turned to me. “I see where you get it from now…”

As I had been reading a lot of good things about Philip Pullman, especially articles like this—and, of course, because Kim was reading tome one of His Dark Materials I walked down to the local library and booked out the trilogy.

Quick note: I do think that the translations of the titles into French are flat. Not bad, just flat. Especially The Subtle Knife as ‘The Tower of Angels’, there is a wonderful mystery in the use of language in that english title—knives generally being anything but subtle—that is totally absent in the French. Again, I find ‘The Northern Kingdom’ instead of Northern Lights adequate, but no more than that. I will admit that I am probably biased on this one, having always found the words ‘Northern Lights’ beautifully evocative, have been fascinated by aurora borealis and here too for a long time. ‘The Amber Mirror’ in place of the The Amber Spyglass also troubles me. A reflecting telescope could be called a mirror—is this a synecdoc?—but a spyglass, I thought, was the tubular version, with lenses at each end, and therefore contains no mirror…

I have devoured the first two volumes and am about to embark on the third. We are Sunday late afternoon and I borrowed the books, yesterday. This probably says a lot more than anything that I could write about the quality of the books.

Even in French, they are beautifully written. Sparse at moments, then rich and dense at others. The style changes subtly to follow the different worlds. They are clearly written for children, but he knows that he is also an adult writing for adults. The children will be surprised when they read the books again, as grown ups, to find that they are not the same. The only complaint that I have is very minor as is in the plots. There is the vast ‘Dark Materials’ arc, stretching over the three. This is fine, well-developed and fun. Inside of that we do have a lot of plot bartering. I will propose this as a variant of the plot vouchers explained by one Nick Lowe in The Well-Tempered Plot Device Whereas in his analysis, the plot voucher is—collect the lot, cash them in. The plot barter implies that you have to barter your plot points for an adventure. I steal your Plot Device (in this case, for example, an Alethiometre), you in turn have to run an errand for me (Find me a Subtle Knife). It’s harmless. It’s fun even, and I enjoy very much Nick Lowe’s article as means of analysing plots.

OK, I do have one other complaint… When Lyra is on the ship with the gypsies going North, her daemon becomes a dolphin and plays in the sea, with other dolphins. A little later we learn that the greater the distance a person is separated from her daemon, the more painful is the experience. The tolerence for Lyra seems to be about 2 to 3 metres, with a slight increase when Pantalaimon is a bird. But even so, I don’t see how this sort of distance could be respected in the case of a dolphin… Yet, no mention of hurt, here, only shared wonder.

Friday night I picked up Kim while Ludivine picked up her father’s car. Then she put it down again. (Sorry, couldn’t resist that. Untrue. Well, the putting down is.).

We went to the cinema as a surprise for Kim—and also to tire her out. The film was 8:30-10 ish and like that I was pretty sure that she’d go to sleep and then stay asleep in the car when we left very early the next morning rather than saying Are we there yet? every two kilometres as loveable kids are wont to do (and in her case—I hope it’s not Dad driving…—Why I ask myself? I drive slowly and calmly and never understand why all the other drivers want to klaxon at me, and flash their lights and overtake me all over the place. It is they who are driving too fast, not me… sounds of righteous indignation ).. We saw Majo no takkyubin, known in France as “Kiki, la petite sorcière” and in the States as “Kiki’s Delivery Service”. Even though it originally came out in 1989, it has only just been released here. It was, as we expected, a wonderful Hayao Miyazaki film and—secret bonus—we saw a teaser for “Hauru no ugoku shiro” better known as Howl’s Moving Castle.

The film delighted us all. I loved the throwawy end, the lack of conflict (this does not mean lack of drama). The evocative drawing, the painted decors. The attention to detail and atmosphere (insects, cats playing, clouds, water…). The obsession with flight and particularly with flying machines. I heard someone in the cinema (the mum in front with her daughter) saying that Kiki got her very ‘Dorothy’ red shoes at the end too, but didn’t personally notice that. I will probably have to rent out the DVD in order to check. It was that sort of film. A growing-up film and a delight to see with one’s children. Oh, and Jiji the cat had the cinema on its knees with laughter.

I was particularly interested in the film from a writing ‘mechanics’ point of view. We are often told that conflict fuels a story, but here we have a clear case of where it doesn’t—there wasn’t any! As I was scolded for a story (a long time ago) that didn’t present conflict, under that very pretense, and as I had wanted to explore other things in that story, I took this to heart, and fully intend to learn from this and try a conflict-less story again.

After that, we all drove off for a weekend with the parents. But that is another story and one that will not be told here. Suffice to say that the fact that I am here and blogging on Monday seems to imply some degree of survival.

I have just realised that this is about the fourth time that I have posted without talking about the wonderful ballet that Ludivine took me off to see last Staurday. Each time I mean to, and get distracted.

I will post about it. I will.

It would take two simple things to cure 90% of traffic problems in Paris: – no cars park where they shouldn’t – no cars engage on a crossing if they are not sure to be able to clear that crossing.

Regularly people will call for more resources to improve the traffic situation. Probably putting radars and cameras everywhere. Of course, both of the things that I mentioned at the start are part of the French highway code. The only thing that they need to be effective is to be applied. As ever, the French prefer to rant and rave and call for more laws which will not be applied any more either.

This is very French this refusal to use the means already to hand and to create a wonderful new inefficient solution. At the moment they have wonderful occasions to do this.

Saturday night Ludivine took me to the Ballet at the Opera Bastille—it was lovely but that isn’t the point here. When we arrived, 15 minutes early, which is a reasonable delay and we had the tickets so it wasn’t as if we needed to queue for anything, we saw an major queue pressing to enter. Why?

Security, I said. They’re searching everyone’s bags. And sure enough, twelve minutes later when we got through the doors they asked to search our bags. I didn’t have one. They have to ask because strictly speaking they can’t search them. So they ask nicely and if you refuse they will probably, just as nicely, refuse to let you in. In that way everyone’s fundamental civil rights are respected—French style. And why are they searching everyone’s bags? Security. Remember that there was a major terrorist attack in Spain three weeks ago.

Yes, of course, says everyone and opens his/her bag.

I am wearing a large bulky coat with lots of inside pockets. I could be carrying explosives, gases, or biological material inside these pockets and all this would probably take the same bulk and weight as the notebooks, wallets pens, pencils and tissues that are in fact in there. I could be wearing a waistcoat of explosives. No-one asks me to open my coat.

I’m not taking terrorist attacks lightly. I clearly remember when bombs were exploding in waste-paper baskets and in the Paris Metro and how I was terrified at the thought of my girls getting caught up in it when they went into Paris to go to the cinema, but if people did stop everyday life then the terrorists are winning because your ordinary everyday terror is showing through so you shut up, grit you teeth and continue ‘ordinary’ life.

However, searching bags in this manner does not deter and has not prevented one single attack. In fact, I suspect that inefficient measures like these are like anti-virus software on a computer in that they lull people into a sense of false security. They also mean—through this erosion of civil liberty—that the terrorists are winning. No bag search can stop someone from leaving a bomb in the metro, only constant and responsible vigilance by all citizens can. No bag search can stop someone from throwing a hand-grenade, from firing a machine gun randomly in the streets, from throwing a bomb, from leaving it in the street. These are how terrorist attacks have killed people in Paris in the past.

As a corollary to this matter, all the dustbins have been sealed in the streets of Paris and the Metro. This seems logical considering how they have been used in the past. Although it is very unlikely that any future terrorists will use the same modus operandi. Passons.

So we have piles of rubbish around the dustbins. These can just as easily hide a bomb. Either the street dustbins serve no useful purpose, in which case they can be removed. For good. Or they serve a purpose, and in that case a substitute refuse collection system is needed. And, if you want this system to be very efficient so that you can quickly spot any suspicious dumped parcels (think Israel). In fact you need to clear the trash away more often than when you had the dustbins in place. But we’re in France where the authorities only pay token lip service to ideas like security. They’re too busy doing things like criminalising poverty and youth (which are other stories altogether).

In the town where I live—due east of Paris and the name begins with a ‘M’—they have another wonderful lip service system in place. It’s called, sorting your household rubbish. In Paris when they brought in this system they suggested, in the glossy leaflets they left in your letterbox, that you have three dustbins, that is, one for each of the different types of rubbish you produce, not forgetting bottles and glass which are extras. Real estate in Paris is so expensive that people cut down on everything, and the flat where I lived then had a kitchen that was under 1.5 square meters in floor surface. Empty. Put in a fridge, a washing machine and one dustbin under the sink and you just have the room to crush yourself into the kitchen too. Plus the fact that it was on the sixth floor so the idea of carrying three different dustbins—and the bottles—down all those floors was a no-no. Everything went into one big sack and that was that.

In M, the kitchen is a decent size, but that is not the issue.

Just go shopping. I do. I don’t buy anything special, it tends to be the cheapest articles at Franprix. And never any brands as I don’t see why I should pay twice the price of the own brands for just a ‘name’. Then get the shopping home and look at all the packaging that is left over when you just put the articles in the fridge and in the cupboards and on the shelves. This isn’t even when you use the stuff. All these companies pay their duty to the recycling people to get their little seal of approval, but they just keep on producing more and more packaging. And glass, and plastics, and bags and blisters. And I am supposed to sort all of this? The real answer is to seriously tax packaging to incite smaller, lighter, more recyclable material. And thus take the pressure off the consumer to do the work that the industrials should be doing. Too easy. Although of course the French will eventually do this, but then they will not use the tax for eco-projects, instead just putting it in the kitty like for the green point now.

So why am I ranting about rubbish when I was talking about terrorism?

Because, on the street, about fifty metres from where I live, are two enormous containers. One is for bottles and the other is for paper. Next to these two is a sealed dustbin. Now a bomb inside that bottle container would be extremely nasty, spraying glass shards all over. But neither of these are sealed. And there is a pile of refuse where the dustbin isn’t.

Do I really need to point out how ridiculous all this is?