The net is really like having one of the best encyclopedias in the word at your elbow, not counting a friendly sort of librairian, named Google, who is willing to run around and bring back the information for you. Want some details on 17th century church clocks? It’s in the British Museum. Seeking to see if my church tower is really feasible as a design? Well here is a similar one.

Countless material, too much to mention: how did people cope before the Net and Google?

I am busy revising chapter two. There are parts that will need cleaning, tidying, cutting, but this chapter is falling into place, and I am counting that it will give me the voice and impetus to move on through to the first draft of chapter three. And then four…

But not today. Today I must prepare for Kim’s party. Her 9th birthday was actually last Saturday but we’re doing a thing for friends and so forth tomorrow. I have put my foot down—I hope to some effect—saying, no, you are not inviting all your class when we agreed on three people (not counting the other three who will be coming, and Emiline and Nadja. But hopefully the latter will be able to help me stay calm). Then off to prepare party games to occupy them. Wrap pressies and prizes. (Mum, your packet and letter both arrived OK). Do some shopping. Tidy, clean and put everything away where small grubby hands can’t grab at it. Rent a couple of videos just in case. So all this means that I probably won’t be able to work over the weekend either… We’ll see.

Woke up this morning with a headache. It clinged on for most of the day, get worse at times. At the moment it has calmed, but there again I have taken so many painkillers and drunk various things that something must have finished by having an effect. I have just checked the air pollution alerts in case it was that, but these are ‘5 – moderate’ on a scale of 1-10. Hard to tell. Air does seem a bit hard, but I don’t know if this is the headache giving that impression.

Went in this midday to have a last lunch with colleagues. I wouldn’t say that I was particular close to them, not in comparaison to other places where I have worked, but they were all willing competent people, and once initial sillyness calmed down everyone get on reasonably well. One can do worse. While I was there I had to retreive my unemployment papers back from MB. According to these I was supposedly serving notice from 18 July to 17 July 2004. And my hiring date was wrong. The guy at the Unemployment Office had laughed at the notice dates. Of course MB was most offended that I asked her to correct all this. And while I was at it, I asked that she checked everything, arguing that as there were already 3 mistakes, she might as well see if there weren’t any more. The guy who prepares these papers was furious, more probably because everyone knew that he had fluffed badly rather than because of the work to do. Well, he should have looked more clearly.

Apart from that, only wrote three lines today.

The French say ‘canicule’ for a heatwave. The strict translation of this in English would be ‘the dog days’, what the French, in turn, call the ‘Indian Summer’: those days at the end of the summer when the long hot days come back. They are called ‘dog days’, the original meaning of ‘canicule’, because at the time Sirius, the dog star, rises and sets with the Sun.
So we are having a minor heatwave. The capacity of the temperature in Paris to quickly soar is rather worrying. It goes from a pleasant 12 degrees to 24 and more overnight. It is as if there is no longer a temperate zone between the two. And once the heat gets inside the flat it is nearly impossible—apart from sleeping in the bath—to get cool.
So between insomnia and heatwaves, my nights are not exactly much fun at the moment.
. . . .
Up to 14 handwritten pages on Pirates, but this isn’t good work. I have got neither the voice nor the rythmn yet. Up to recently I’d have said that sunch a proposition was prevarication. Now, I’d be less inclined. The voice is the way that the story unfolds to your ear. All (good) books have a voice. No, I’ll correct that, all good tales have a voice. The rythmn is just that, just as much in the writing as the speed of the writing. So I plough on.

I must update my résumé now. Get it back online. More work.

So that’s the noise it makes…
I dragged myself to work this morning after another hollow night. I say hollow as it is not fair to call them sleepless. I do sleep. Until about 2 o’clock and then again from 7 to 8. So you see… ‘hollow’ seems to be the right word.
I got the letter yesterday, it arrived at home and Ludivine signed for it. Last night I sat down with a couple of bottles of red wine and prepared for today. The first thing was a series of letters, the first asking not to have to work my notice. The other letters got more and more weird according to possible answers to the first. As it happened, the first was accepted. It took all morning, and the fact that I sat down doing nothing but tidy my desk. I didn’t even switch on the computer. The wastepaper basket is full, it was that sort of tidying my desk. I may now leave the company Friday at 6 o’clock and only come back mid July to collect my papers.

Ludivine hired some DVDs for Kim last weekend. While there is not much to say about Dragonheart—which was a nice thought, playing up to Kim’s dragon obsession—except that there was a good story in there somewhere struggling to get out, and that I never realised that a smirking CGI dragon could be so annoying for something that didn’t exist.
The real treat was Shaolin Soccer. Words fail me to describe this. Football leaves me indifferent, whether playing, watching or overhearing dolts raving on about it. This film was basically The Full Monty (thanks to Ludivine for pointing this out), as Kung Fu footballers instead of strippers. It was completely unbelievable, hilarious (just when you thought that it couldn’t go farther, it did), kitsch, full of wonderful CGI and terrible costumes and make up (the girl’s shaved head? She looked like an extra from Star Trek). We all loved it.
. . . . .
Just finished Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters, this was the best so far: the most accomplished, written, referential, the most complete. I also demolished Strata and Dark Side of the Sun. What was interesting in these two was that the idea of the Discworld was hovering there (in space?) before he started work on the series. I also read The Colour of Magic, Witches Abroad and Equal Rites. I am currently reading Lords and Ladies. And greatly enjoying it. Keep my self occupied while waiting for the executioner.

If you really are to be beheaded, it is in your interest that the Head Executioner has a good breakfast. Else he will hack away and botch the job. While the sports reporters will just say: “Well, it wasn’t one of old Lefty’s better jobs and not a really memorable match, but he did break through the gristly bits in the end… ” it is nevertheless my neck on the line. And I feel that I don’t want it botched.
. . . . .
What really messes me up about all this—besides the not knowing—is the way that it effecticely ruins my summer with Kim. I had put my holiday days aside for this summer, taking care not to use them up in advance. And, because of the stupidity of MB and Hubby, I have been sorely tepted at times, days when I have come into work crippled with back pain, but unable to afford to day a day of unpaid sickleave… Just because I believed that the work that I was doing was recognised as possessing some worth.

If I get my notice anyday soon then I have 2 months presence left. That takes me to mid July. Right in the middle of my planned time with Kim. And, of course, MB has said that unlike everybody else she has fired, she wants me to work my notice. Even if I were to find a doctor who’d be willing to put me on paid sickleave—I mean two weeks backpain and sleeples nights is normal fare, it’s easier to give medication to hide the symptoms, than to allow me to get away from MB for a while. Putting myself on sickleave is no good anyway as all it does is extend the notice period.

I am feeling a bit bitter about this all.

Things are also complicated by the unemployement benefit rules. Besides the time-wasting of all the meetings and rubbish that you get called along to participate in, all the monies that you receive on leaving are converted to a daily salary equivalent. If all goes normally, I will leave with 5 weeks’ holidays, and two weeks (pro-rata) annual bonus. This combined with the one-week holding period that they instigated to cut down on unemployement payments, means that I will have to wait 8 weeks before I even see any benefit. Or, if I do find another job quickly, then they won’t let me start by taking time off to be with Kim.

Either way I’m fucked. This is why I am feeling more than a bit bitter about all this.

I heard a strange swishing sound this afternoon. It was probably the axe just slipping by, or possibly the sound of the stone running along the edge, making sure that everything is good and sharp and ready. In fact, this ridiculous situation has been going on for so long that I am starting to get a crick in my neck from waiting here on the chopping block.

That’s life, I suppose.

So, this afternoon MB called me into her office: the company will not be making me an offer to retain my services, after all.

. . . . .
What does all this mean?

Last Thursday, in what seemed a sort of panic, MB came to see me. “I have read through your resumé, she said, I think that I would like to make you an offer to keep you on in a different capacity. Of course, you won’t be interested.” I liked that last bit.

You know my point of view, I replied, I would be perfectly happy to consider a written offer. Yes, yes, she said. I will pass it on to you.
Friday she said, Oh, I haven’t finished, can we talk about this later. Fine, I replied. What about Monday?

Monday she still hadn’t finished and proposed Wednesday. I started to suspect delaying tactics.

After today’s short discussion that went nowhere—although we managed to finish on a good note—“We all do what we have to do.” she said. “Yes, I replied, you do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do also.” Suddenly she was interested, “What do you mean by that?” “I’m sure that I mean much the same thing as you, no?” And I left her office. And called a lawyer.
. . . . .
I am supposing that, after a good weekend’s thinking-it-over, she thinks that the possibility of losing in court in 2 years time—that’s the time it takes to settle things in French courts, and probably the reason why this is not a litigatious society like the US has become—is worth her while if it means she can fire me today as she wishes. I have looked at the situation and sincerely believe that not only is the firing for the reasons that she gives not justified, but also that she has not respected the procedure. And so that I stand a good chance of winning and getting a royal 2 months’ pay as compensation for those heinous crimes. She has, even now, probably budgetted that cost. Hell, I’m sure that she has budgetted a generous 3 months, just in case. Which is why laws to protect workers here in France are totally ineffective and do not cause companies to hesitate in the slightest in hiring and firing. They know that time will always be on their side.

Someone remarked that there is a convention in teenage slash movies that the kids, when they get into the mysterious house in the woods, will always split up. This is strange for two reasons—everything about the world that they live in is otherwise identical to ours, except that while they are usually the ideal demographic, we have to understand that they have never seen a teenage slash movie, nor even heard of such a thing, and thus have never learnt that they should never separate. The other strange point is that no director has thus far (as far as I know) played with our expectations on this point, kept the crowd together, and managed to slash them all anyway…

Anyway, these obscure references were brought on by going to see Séance last night (‘Kôrei’ for the purists).

There were some wonderful creepy moments when the goose pimples rippled over your skin. But the central premise of the story was so disappointing—surely, like for slash pics, people have seen enough films to know that you call the police, the ambulance, anyone. You do not try to turn things to your advantage, nor cover up. The attempts to establish the motivation for not doing this were not credible either. While they said the words, there was nothing in their characters or past actions to support that. That said, I liked the film making, the rather dowdy acting, the creepy effects, but not the story. Shame.

Yesterday I had two strange experiences. The first was the formal interview required under French law before one can be fired. Surreal wasn’t the word. No, sick was more like it. You are being praised to the heavens to such a degree that it starts becoming suspicious, but you’re still being fired. I think that I would have prefered the treatment of a boss that I heard about from a friend: you were called into an office; he would have his checkbook in front of him—“How much?” was the question. And you collected your papers on the way out.

Then I tried to write a synopsis of Juliet. I consulted about 15 sites through Google. All explained in length how to write a winning synopsis that is guaranteed to sell your book. I imagine that the quality of writing and the actual book should also have some merits, so I took the titles with a small truckload of salt. What I did manage to pull together was a rather sketchy—and at times contradictory—structure and modus operandi. The part that I found the hardest was the idea that the final document should just be one page long. I tried that, it became a blurb, not a synopsis. Yet, all the sample synopses that I found online were about 3-4 pages, so I don’t feel bad about mine being in the same case.

Initially, Juliet has a complicated structure—a ‘Y’ shape. With two stories paralleling each other until they join. During the forks of the Y, events happen on one side and are paralleled on the other. To make things worse from my point of view, initially everything was chronological, but this made practically all the first scenes, rabbit ones and Juliet didn’t get introduced until chapter 2 (when reading this to Kim, she just assumed that Juliet was a rabbit too. Oops! I changed everything to start with Juliet and establish her first). In the synopsis this comes over as choppy. Now, of course, because of all that, I have severe doubts about everything. And it took about 4 draughts to get the beginnings of the current synopsis.

The fact that I’m trying to write the synopsis is actually good news. Thomas, a friend of Ludivine’s, knows the editor in the Children’s division of a reputable British publisher. I must send her over the first three chapters and the synopsis. Now, my reasonable self knows that nothing will come of this except a polite refusal letter in a few months. However, it is nice to know that I will get even that. It also means a slight foot in the door when Pirates (which will be better than Juliet by a magnitude of 10) is finished. And that could be fun. And if that is not the one… well there is always Died.

Just finished reading The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll. It was a great romp, and interesting twist on old time travel paradoxes and generally a good time was had by all. Parts of it were riotously funny: I burst out laughing when the central character met his father during one of his time jumps. Very funny, very well done.
The only bad thing about the book was the title. In French it is translated as “À l’aube du huitième jour”. Now this is a theme in the book, and so is not so bad as The Amber Spyglass being translated as ‘The Amber Mirror’ as happened for Philip Pullman which is plain false and inexact. What annoyed me is that Carroll could have called his book, The Dawn of the Eighth Day quite easily. But he didn’t. He called it The Wooden Sea. That is part of his creative process, the book title is part of the book. So why do translaters (in France), or perhaps publishers, change the title? Ludivine postulates that they are frustrated writers and so this is an area where they exercise their ‘creativity’. It could be an answer, but it seems like a poor excuse.