The Bold Soul: A Writer's Life in Paris

The Writer's Desk

Facing a writing fear: reading something I've written in front of other writers. Read more →

It's all Golden

There's a blog award contest sponsored by the Mairie de Paris, called the Golden Blog Awards, and I've entered my blog under the "Paris" category! If you feel so disposed, I'd appreciate your vote! In this award, you can vote once per day, per computer/IP address. If the icon is blue and says VOTE! - then do it! There are a lot of blogs entered and I have no idea if I'll win (especially since I'm up against 99% French-language bloggers) but it's fun to enter. Perhaps I'll attract more French readers! Please spread the word: you can send people directly to my voting page by copying and pasting this link: http://www.golden-blog-awards.fr/blogs/the-bold-soul.html And thanks for your vote! (Registrations end 18 October; voting ends 25 October.) Read more →

Say it, don't spray it

You may have already heard of this famous poem about the proclivities of English language pronunciation, but just for fun I decided to reprint it here. Georges couldn't get through more than a few paragraphs the first time I showed it to him, and I can easily imagine for a non-native English speaker, our pronunciation would drive that person a bit nuts. (Of course, I suffer with French and have an 11-year-old constantly correcting me.) Most English-speakers can't get even 90% of these correct, let alone a perfect 100%. How many do you know how to say correctly? Which ones have you scratching your head? (Those British proper names catch me up every time!) And don't forget: there's BRITISH English (the author's mother tongue), AMERICAN English, CANADIAN English, and AUSTRALIAN English, and we all have our own little differences in pronunciation. So what is "correct" these days might just be relative anyway. Have fun with it (and this Dictionary might be able to give you some hints)... and have a big drink after you're done. * * * * * The Chaos, by Charivarius (Gerard Nolst Trenité) I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and... Read more →

It's down to details (The 2013 BCLT, Part 4)

Now that the major stages of trip planning are pretty well take care of -- I've got my Eurostar tickets printed and my other train tickets from TheTrainLine.com arrived a few days ago, and I've got places to sleep paid for and confirmed for all four nights -- now it's all about the details of what I'll be doing and when. I now know how much time I will have in each place I'm stopping, which makes it easier to figure out just how much I can "fit in" to my timetable. This forces me to set priorities: what are the things I MUST spend time seeing and doing, and what are the things that would be NICE to see if I happen to have the time. The 4th day of the trip is taken care of, for the most part: that's the Mad Max Tour that leaves from Bath in the morning and will take me to Stonehenge, Avebury, Lacock and Castle Combe, and will return to Bath by around 4:30 or so. Since I'll be spending the day before that doing all my walking bits around Bath -- the Roman Baths, all the pretty Georgian architecture, and tea... Read more →

Riding the Rails (The 2013 BCLT, Part 3)

Plans for my upcoming British Countryside Literary Tour are definitely progressing! I have booked accommodations for my two nights in Oxford, and found something that looks quite nice, reasonable and convenient via Airbnb. A few years ago, I would never have thought of staying in someone's home, but now having used Airbnb as a host, and seeing the sort of checks and balances their system provides to help you ensure you will get what you pay for, I now think it's an excellent way to find inexpensive places to stay when traveling on a budget. For starters, while they billed my credit card for the full price of the room, the homeowner doesn't receive that money until the day AFTER I arrive, which means if I get there and there is any sort of problem, I can contact Airbnb immediately to stop the reservation and find myself another place to stay. Also, you can select locations where the homeowners have received multiple good reviews from past guests (hosts can also have their Facebook friends enter positive remarks about them, but these are counted separately from actual guest reviews, and frankly I wouldn't book a room solely on the say-so of... Read more →

My train of thought (The 2013 BCLT, Part 2)

After a lot of thought and research, last week I changed my mind about driving on this trip. I still think I could do it, the driving on the left thing, and that once I got the hang of it I would probably have a blast despite the stress of learning to shift with my left hand and trying NOT to turn on autopilot into oncoming traffic. But it seemed to be the most expensive option available to me (add paying for parking along with the rental and insurance fees) and budget is a strong consideration for me on this trip. Also, if I was going to arrive on Sunday and with Monday being a Bank Holiday, I wouldn't even be able to get a rental car until Tuesday. So it was back to doing everything by train or bus or tour bus, and I would need to plan accordingly. Knowing that I would now spend the last 2 nights sleeping in Bath and would probably plan to spend the first two nights in Oxford, I reworked my proposed itinerary, which now looks like THIS: Day 1: Travel day from Paris to London. Then take train from London to Oxford... Read more →

Blighty, here I come! (The 2013 BCLT, Part 1)

Detailed planning for my 2013 British Countryside and Literary Tour have commenced! Read more →

C'est la vie

It's been a bit of a slow blogging week, mainly because I've been more occupied with my step-son than usual. Le Garçon was on the second week of his annual 2-week winter school break (there's another 2-week break coming up end of April, for spring -- yeah, I know, lots of school holidays here in La Belle France). And as we didn't have anything special planned due to Georges needing to be at work all week, and all his buddies being out of town on THEIR school breaks, Le Garçon and I ended up spending all day, every day together. Fortunately for both of us, we like each other and also he's at an age where he is often quite good company now. The first big thing we did together was launch our special blog project -- THAT was a pretty big deal since we've been planning it for something like six weeks. The timing was finally right this week to get the first installment out there, and now we're working on putting together a regular weekly post. Even on the weeks when he's not here chez Nous, we will have planned a post in advance. It means thinking ahead,... Read more →

I love our neighbors

I have to say, I love the neighbors in my part of Paris. Just around the corner, on Rue de Bruxelles in the 9th, is the building where Emile Zola lived, wrote "J'accuse", and eventually died. He is buried very nearby, in the Cimitière de Montmartre. Just a short walk away at 54 Rue des Abbesses is one of Vincent Van Gogh's residences, and Max Ernst lived at 75 Rue Lepic. Picasso. Pissaro. Utrillo. Renoir. Dali. Toulouse-Lautrec. Modigliani. Degas. Valadon. Matisse. They all lived and worked in Montmartre. Composer Erik Satie lived on Rue Courtot. Writers Jean Cocteau, Apollinaire. Singers Dalida and Edith Piaf. The list of brilliant creatives is long and distinguished. And whether or not they actually lived in this part of Paris during their lifetimes, their final resting places may be here in the cemetery: Alexandre Dumas, fils. Sacha Guitry. Gustave Moreau. Nijinsky, the famous Russian ballet dancer. Offenbach. Stendhal. François Truffaut. Berlioz. So much talent, so much creative energy in one little corner of this city. Maybe, just maybe, I belong here, too. Or, I will. Someday soon. Read more →

'Tweet On

One of Georges' sisters taught me a very creative way to camouflage express one's age when one is "of a certain age". Instead of saying, for instance "J'ai quarante-huit ans" if you were 48 years old, you would just say "J'ai t'huit ans." (Zjhay tweet ahn) And then let 'em guess what that's supposed to mean. The "tweet" part is the normal liaison in French when you say the numbers 28, 38, 48, 58 and 68: vingt-huit, trente-huit, etc. (If you don't care about knowing any French, you can just take my word for it and don't agonize about how to say it.) T'huit ans is useful, no matter what your actual age might be, when you just feel like it's nobody's business how old you are. Staring down a milestone like 30, 40, 50 or 60? You, too, can be just t'huit ans. 29? 39? 49? T'huit ans sounds better. Getting up there in the 70s or 80s or higher? T'huit ans, baby, t'huit ans. And I'm not talking about Twitter. I'm using t'huit ans today, though, not because I care to hide my age (although at 52 I'm feeling more t'huit ans-ish every year) but because I'm celebrating... Read more →