The Sound of Silence

I am listening right now to the terribly sinister Blue Valentines by Tom Waits, and frankly it makes me a bit nostalgic...

... to mark the anniversary
of someone that I used to be...

Anyway - moving on swiftly, the reason(s) behind my long silence has (have) been (almost) purely professional: too many things to do, to little time!

Had a stint on the radio last Monday (for The European Day of Languages) - on one of the coolest radio programmes in Scotland (the Radio Café) - It was an interesting experience, all 20 seconds of it! (don't you just hate it when you cannot get your voice heard because someone just keeps on talking - anyway, I should probably sharpen my ceaselessly-talking technique in case I am ever asked again!!) I managed to ridicule myself (mmh... now that is a surprise!) by muttering something about whatever question was being asked being a "double-sided sword"... Excellent!

Ladies and gentlemen,

I present to you Lise Morel, teacher extraordinaire!

(yes, yes, she does have a first-class honours degree in English Literature, yet can barely master the art of the cliché in English)

mmmh - Moving on (again)... Was involved in translating presentations for a conference on climate change taking place this week in London. Now, that was really scary. And then as if things could not get any worse, I talked to my friend Robert, a marine biologist, and really didn't like what he said about the gulf stream. Nope, didn't like it one little bit at all!

Did my cool thing of the Autumn by going to see Bloc Party at the Corn Exchange on Sunday (merci merci merci Rob!) : really enjoyed it, except for the encore which I personally found a bit tame...

And then all the evening classes started again on Monday night - lots of nice people to meet ! - and now I should really get my act together and write up all those summaries!!!

Oh and I discovered the new Virgin Digital service - where you can download records and/or tracks: ideal for lazy cows such as myself who cannot even manage to even think about going to a record shop, let alone actually do it... Why! I even managed to download Jacques Higelin! Yes, Higelin - so I am currently listening to Tombé du Ciel (you can listen to an extract here).
Absolutely. Lovely.


http://french.edilang.com/
www.premiereclasse.co.uk