Flickr is a photo sharing site that was bought up by Yahoo! back in 2005. I had a few photos on Yahoo! photos from about 2001, and they’ve now been migrated to Flickr. This encouraged me to explore a little, and without further ado here are a few pictures to get you started exploring what I’ve got uploaded so far:

There’s a joke database on this site. Every now and then I get a new joke and I update the 200+ jokes available. One came in yesterday that I thought I’d share it here. There are more pilot conversations like it in the database.

The German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They not only expect one to know ones gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign: Speedbird 206.

Speedbird 206: ” Frankfurt , Speedbird 206 Clear of active runway.”
Ground: “Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven.”

The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.

Ground: “Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?”
Speedbird 206: “Stand by, Ground, I’m looking up our gate location now.”
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): “Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?”

Speedbird 206 (coolly): “Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark, — And I didn’t land.”

Each morning on my way to and from dropping Nathan at his childminder’s flat, I walk past a block of flats that has a diagonal façade above which is a square overhang. The space underneath is closed by a mesh shutter, and nothing has changed behind it since I’ve been walking past it these past few months. A layer of dust on everything tends to point to nothing having moved for longer still.

More conclusively, an old Pepsi machine stands there; it is no longer lit up to entice you to refresh yourself with a fizzy drink. The dust has even taken hold on the vertical face of the selection buttons. You can just see in the low resolution mobile phone photo I took this morning that the price for a can is 6F00. The euro became standard currency in France in 2002, which would suggest that the machine has been there for five years or more. The Franc is now resigned to be remembered as 1/6.55957 of a Euro, and Nathan won’t ever look at - or fondly remember - the colourful blue 50 Franc notes with Antoine de Saint Exupéry, or the big old 100 Franc notes with Paul Cézanne on them, except in books or in the hands of old banknote collectors.

Nathan loves brushes and brooms, especially when he gets hold of them and starts walking around. Watch as he walks around and babbles away. He gives himself a bit of a surprise at the end of the video… you can’t be too careful with a long broomstick if you’re not watching what you’re doing.

This video was filmed at the end of January this year. He can get himself into even bigger trouble now!

We took Nathan to Marrakech at the end of May, to see the new house that Yasmina’s Aunt & Uncle have built there. He’s been to Morocco before but this time was different because he’s 19 months old, so he runs around and is generally harder to keep up with. He’s in his new blue pushchair - the nice red Mclaren pushchair he had was stolen shortly before we left .

I was last in Marrakech around 2002; I first went there in 1999. That first visit, eight years ago, was to the south of Marrakech too - the Ourika valley. Today, the road out south of Morocco to that valley is unrecognisable compared to 1999. There’s been a high level of development with new roads, housing and infrastructure. The house we visited is just off that road, in the Palmeraie region near a golf course. For part of the journey from central Marrakech you go along about 2 miles of road (the Boulevard Mohammed VI, named after the current king who has encouraged development in Marrakech - a key region for tourism) with a central strip of well cultivated and tended gardens with walkways. Even late at night you can see families walking in the gardens - even though there’s a road either side it’s quite a wide central part - and there are fountains, benches and lawns. Before, this area was just a concrete and bitumen track, waste land and a few palm trees.

The main market and central plaza - Djmaa el Fna - hasn’t changed much though. Still the same snake charmers, Gnaoua musicians, and traditional water sellers, etc. as back then, but this time they had eager children to ply their wooden snakes and toys to, so brushing them off was more of a challenge. Let’s just say it helps to be with Moroccans and to speak a bit of the language yourself. I still had to dig into my pockets to get balloons for the children though - Nathan’s cousin Mina (on the right) and two of her friends (the youngest is also pictured) from London were there and they weren’t going home empty handed.

Being back in the market - albeit briefly, since there were five adults and four children all trailing around together - was nice. You can see pictured the spice stall we stopped off at for the girls to pick up Henna (for hair colour and temporary tatoos), fresh mint (for tea) and Kohl (used for makeup).

It feels like I spent a lot of the holiday telling children off - of Moroccan and French mothers respectively - in English. There’s a swimming pool in the garden and so they needed to be told to put shoes on when they got out, to keep their heads covered, to make sure they were suntan lotioned before going out in the sun and after swimming. Since the other children there are schooled in England, I suppose English is more of a language of “authority” than the French they hear at home. Or perhaps not… but it worked.

Now I’m back, refreshed, and already after a small amount of time back at work I’m eagerly waiting for the next holiday to arrive.

Here’s a quote that aptly sums up the election campaign, mostly from an online standpoint. It probably reverberates enough to be applicable to most other election campaigns of recent years. From OuiNon.net (yes or no, clever…).

Que les organisations de militants arrêtent de pourrir les commentaires de blogs, forums, sondages et quotidiens en ligne ; qu’ils arrêtent d’envahir Youtube avec leurs vidéos grotesques ; qu’ils épargnent les murs de leurs affichage sauvage ; que le matériel de campagne officiel soit plus orienté vers l’information que vers la publicité ; que notre argent ne servent plus à financer des meetings religieux ; que les candidats profitent de la campagne pour nous parler de leurs idées au lieu de monter des coups de communications et du lobbying médiatique en série. Qu’on arrête de nous prendre pour des jambons quoi…

Which, roughly translated, means

Could the Militant organisations please stop lowering the tone of blog, forum and [online] newspaper comments; stop invading YouTube with grotesque videos; spare the walls their bill posters. Could the official campaign propaganda be oriented towards information and not advertising; our money stop being used to finance religious meetings; the candidates use the campaign to speak of their ideas instead of communications strategy and serial media lobbying. Could they, like, stop taking us for pork / sheep…

Original French text from “Spécialiste de rien du tout” who also made an excellent analysis of the campaign posters (in French). You might also want to read a fellow Englishwoman in France’s view of the recent TV debate.

The political excitement is mounting; for weeks now, the focus has been on the presidential race. A couple of Sundays ago, the first round saw a massive 84% turnout and the two main parties’ candidates came first and second. On the right, for the UMP, Nicolas Sarkozy. On the left, for the PS, Ségolène Royal. So these two top placed candidates (gaining 31% and 26% of the vote respectively) now fight it out in a second round this Sunday.

Opinion polls consistently put Mr Sarkozy ahead by 1-4 points, but the number of declared undecided voters easily outweigh the margin of error in these rather unreliable gauges of public opinion. Last night a televised debate between the two candidates overran by at least half an hour, and showed Mrs. Royal to be rather more aggressive than usual, and Mr. Sarkozy rather more calm. The end result seems to have smoothed the rough edges around each candidate.

As an Englishman in France, I don’t have the right to vote, even though I do pay rather a lot of taxes . You must have French nationality - which I can legitimately claim, being married to a French national - to vote in presidential elections. So I follow the elections full of contradictory emotions. On the one hand, the chosen president will probably have some impact on my professional life, particularly in the case of a win by the right. On the other, since I don’t have the right to vote, my opinion won’t count.

I could perhaps persuade others to vote in one way or the other on Sunday, but here is not the place to cite my political opinion. Even if freedom of speech protects political opinion more than anything else, I think I’ll stick in the undecided camp and leave the French nationals to choose for me.

UPDATE: Surfing around, I just found that Paddy Power are giving 4-1 for Ségolène Royal and 1-7 (or 7-1 on) for Nicolas Sarkozy. The right are clear favourites…

The great thing about Easter is that it always makes a long weekend, because it’s observed on specific days of the week. Sadly in France it’s only a three day weekend because Good Friday is not a public holiday here. Christmas is similarly unfortunate for an Englishman in France, with Boxing Day not a holiday, so the two major religious festivals of the year mean less statutory holiday and more paid leave allowance loss.

The Bank Holidays Act of 1871 established a number of holidays in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: most of these fall on fixed days (mostly Mondays) anyway, but for New Year’s Day and Christmas Day / Boxing Day. As explained on the DTI website:

Substitute days are customarily appointed for all UK bank and public holidays which fall on a Saturday or Sunday. For some bank holidays, these substitute days are laid down in legislation. In other cases, they are appointed by Royal Proclamation (or Proclamation by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland). The substitute day is normally the following Monday.

What a wonderful system, to have a Royal Proclamation (no less!) to make sure you don’t lose holiday because of weekends. Sadly, in terms of not losing holiday at least, France is a lay republic, so you just lose holiday if it falls on a weekend. Even their May holidays are fixed to dates and not days of the week; 1st May, 8th May and Ascension are all holidays that fall in May but some years you don’t get much holiday out of it (like last year). You can even not have any extra days off over Christmas!

So enjoy your Easter Monday and, on the one day that they’re guaranteed to have the same joy as you in having an long weekend off work, think of the poor French that have no “Royal Proclamation” to save those other wonderful bank holidays.

Technical note: sorry if you received an email about “hacked by devil”. My webhost (and my blogging platform) was hacked yesterday in a massive automated hack. Service is back to normal, and you have nothing to worry about.