Sleepy Suffolk

I seldom write in French. The note hereafter which I’ve just dug out while sifting through emails is a small exception…

13:18 27/10/2008

Petite note depuis Orly.

Me voici attablé à un café-bar du terminal sud. Je tente de travailler ce qui n’est pas chose aisée vu le manque de sommeil: je n’ai dormi que 3h la nuit dernière et je me sens comme drogué maintenant. Je sirote un espresso en tentant de comprendre ce que j’écris sur mes «slides». Une voix monocorde lance des appels à passagers égarés, les uns en partance pour le Maroc, d’autres venant de Point à Pitre. J’aimerais qu’elle vienne annoncer ton arrivée surprise.
Malheureusement les contes de fées restent cantonnés aux étagères poussièreuses des bibliothèques pour enfants. Pourtant je suis sûr que toi plus que quiconque en ta qualité d’illustratrice détient la clef de ces contes de fées. Donc j’attends ta venue à ce café aéroportuaire…
Trêve de bagatelles, mes yeux se ferment, et je vois ton visage, je sens ta peau, tes yeux, tes sourcils, tes cheveux. Et ils me donnent du courage et de l’espoir. J’espère que tu ne prends pas ça du mauvais côté.
Je viens d’enlever l’étiquette de mon premier vol (Londres - Paris). Elle sent la colle, celle qu’on avait quand on était au primaire. Ces pots blancs et bleus je crois avec un bâtonnet orange que l’on prenait pour étaler cette glu blanche.
Nous venons de finaliser nos réservations pour le roadtrip. On restera dans deux gîtes de France en Gironde (Bourg) et à Mosnes, long de la Loire au lieu-dit du Buisson. Ça te plairaît j’en suis certain. Quand tu seras rentrée d’Italie, on pourra se le faire notre roadtrip. Je ne serai plus à Ipswich. Le Suffolk sans toi c’est un peu comme un crayon papier cassé, ça n’a pas de pointe comme dirait Blackadder. La traduction hélas ne rend pas le double sens (life without you is like a broken pencil, pointless… Tu connaissais déjà) Comment se passent tes cours? Rencontres-tu de nveaux étudiants? Les gens sont-ils sympas? Je t’ai déjà posé les questions mais je ne me lasse pas des réponses. Comment se passe le trajet en train? La ville de Sta Maria est-elle assez petite pour qu’on puisse facilement la parcourir à pied? Vas-tu souvent à l’amphithéatre? Es-tu déjà allée sur les sites importants comme Pompéi ou Herculanum (Ercolano comme tu me l’as appris)?
J’aimerais bien y aller avec toi, surtout Ercolano en fait, donc si tu veux bien attendre fin novembre, ça me ferait plaisir.
Emeline me demande de tes nouvelles. Elle est plus bavarde que jamais et croit toujours que je fais pipi au lit. Il faudra que je lui demande si toi aussi tu as eu droit à ça.
Hier nous nous sommes faits un repas du dimanche entre colocs (moins Amaia qui était à Londres). Les infirmières Pili et Maria sont venues se joindre à notre table. J’avais acheté de la venaison chez Abel & Cole. Ça m’a rappelé la fois où nous étions allés dans le Norfolk. Ma mémoire me fait défaut et je ne me souviens plus du nom de la propriété de la Nat’l Trust. Tout ce dont je me souviens est l’excursion bredouille vers le village Iceni. As-tu des photos de cette période?
Je vais aller faire mon check-in, je coupe cette lettre ici même. Réponds-moi ne serait-ce qu’un petit mot (un monosyllabique fera l’affaire).

It was late, one of those wet fall evenings where dusk has disappeared into a premature night. As often, our meeting had overrun and by then we were the only ones to go back to central Charleroi. A colleague kindly gave us a lift to the city. But not knowing the street name I had given him let alone the location of our hotel, he dropped us somewhere convenient. And ironically enough it so happened, he left us off right next to Waterloo Underground Station, on the busy eponymous avenue. Coincidence or Belgian sense of humor? Surely my colleague knew I’m French, surely he knows what Waterloo is. A Belgian city? Well… yes.
So there we were clueless, helpless, shrouded in darkness, with a mere few rays of hope emanating from a handful of shady bars’ neon signs. Theo pulled out his Blackberry in the hope of pinning down our location and that of our hotel but the fruity mobile failed us. I had to resort to pulling out my conspicuous laptop, snif around for a wifi point and go to Google maps…And Larry Page saved our poor wandering souls.
The actual hotel wasn’t actually that far off - a mere couple of blocks down. The thing is direction: you always end up going down the wrong direction lest you have a map with you (and even so, I know some folks who’d read the map the wrong way round).
So it was with much relief that we entered our hotel lobby and settled down in the adjoining restaurant to enjoy a well-deserved meal.
And being in the land where beer flows as freely as age-old camembert in France, we resorted to triying a local ‘cereal-based’ drink (does that make it part of your five-a-day?). Asking the waitress what they had, she replied the usual Grimbergen, Heineken suspects and also mentioned a scotch. Now, the conversion being carried out in French, scotch doesn’t immediately sound as if referring to those hairy folks on the other side of Hadrian’s wall. A Frenchman would probably first think of sticky tape (sellotape on either side of Hadrian’s Wall). And I thought no less. When the waitress came back with a S curve-shaped large glass containing an amber-dark beer, I read the label and immediately thought ‘darn, I picked a Scottish ale’. But again I was wrong. The labelling certainly felt from up North with a tartan-patterned St Andrew’s cross as if the beer were begging for shortcake. But the taste, the flavor, and the fizziness were altogether sweet, rich, and very continental. Nothing of the radically different insular ales we find from Plymouth to Inverness. And the head was a staggering 8-10 cm tall barely adequate for the English pub drinker (see CAMRA’s take on this).
During the later part of my meeting the following day, I started googling a bit to figure out who was behind this nifty not so Scottish (or is it?) beverage.
It turns out it’s brewed in Belgium by Alken-Maes (Belgian folks) which is owned by Scottish & Newcastle (across the North Sea). The brand Watneys (or Watney’s - I found both spellings) refers to an old, now deceased, brand of beer for which most Internet users have unkind words that I shan’t repeat here.
The Belgians, in their whimsical way about life, are probably the only ones who would disguise one of their own beers as being from Scotland, brewed locally by a local brand yet now in the hands of a UK brewing magnate.
And to top off this dizzy post (on the account of the staggering 8% alc. content), here are a picture of Watney’s ale and its head alongside CAMRA’s campain for full pints.

It all started with the usual Ryanair treatment: a delay due to the plane bound for Nantes not being there. Not being there I hear? Well where on Earth had it gone? Not to worry Mr. O’Leary was on the case and soon found out some naughty leprechauns had forced ATCs (Air Traffic Controllers for those non-planecabulary-aware) into a strike thus delaying the Dublin-Stansted flight and therefore the Nantes flight (as it was meant to carry us, wee passengers bound for what Ryanair dares call Britanny). As to whether Nantes is part of Britanny or not, we shall let other people deal with it.
Once we did manage to get airbound (after I recharged my laptop in a stealth electric plug at Stansted; some Italian 50-some doofus willingly kicked my charger around to then say scusa scusa… And la tua mamma, fa la pizza? Why did he have to hover round me in the first place?), we were some two hours late. As a result, whilst we’d planned to visit our folks down in Cholet - dear ol’ timers - my sister and I drove back to her place where I met with the giggly monster!

The past couple of days saw me ‘jet off’ (to put it in WAG terminology) to Madrid and then hop off to Barcelona as part of a leisure / business trip. In the latter case, I’m attending OGF 23 and BEinGRID Industry Days where I’m giving a presentation on a business experiment dealing with online gaming.
Now that work is done is dusted, here’s a report on our mighty oldies, the bold adventurers Guy & Mimi who dared to cross the Pyrenees from France into rainy (yes rainy) Spain.
After a rocky start - Guy having his walled been robbed in the underground (el metro Dora would say) - G&M eventually managed to find a decent apartment somewhat to their liking within the M30 (London’s Circular or Paris’s inner ring) only some 5 stops away from Puerta del Sol. Fitting location for a sweet start in lively Madrid. ¡Habrá que aguantar la marcha!
And for the family’s remaining bits and bobs, here are a few snaps of the golden couple’s new nest.