mercredi 26 février 2003

Yes, Heather, you can: the Axeman That time of year. The government will always ask you for money in winter when you're at your bleakest, weakest and bleariest. (Just as it will always pass the most unpleasant legislation in summer when it thinks you think it's on holiday too. Irrespective of its colour, which is usually a kind of muddy purple now anyway.) If you insist on paying your taxes on line, start here (French, but really quite clear). But consider the alternatives, too. 1) If you use a computer, they will perhaps ask for the paperwork to back up your outrageous claims anyway. 2) Should you go to the tax office, smile! Be nice. Make them feel they're doing you a favour. Bring a ray of joy into their weary, underpaid lives. I promise: it disarms them utterly! You've almost won before you begin. Observe the three people in front of you in the queue. Two of them are likely to launch in on a war footing from the first moment. Your own act is unlikely to see them actually cut what you owe, but should you need a reprieve, you'll get one. 9:33:34 PM  link   your views? [] City of Light, right? Write?! Oui, mon ami - the one but not so only "Paris, France". I shall write about living here when things seem worth saying, but two decades down the line, there's a lot you no longer "see". Fresher eyes are younger ones - "at this moment in time, Jim." OK. This week the sun shone. Magnifique et rare! But winter is generally damp, low-cloud grey and grim forbearance. Nice when people clear out of the place for the school hols. Some of those Métro stations that so stun you with efficiency shut down for weeks, sometimes months, on end, for a repaint and retiling job. The super-fast express walkway at Montparnasse-Bienvenüe station hasn't worked for ages. Not with elderly people, and some less senior citizens, tumbling forwards and backwards into the arms of whole teams of grinning, smartly uniformed RATP personnel awaiting their next victim. "Ne lever pas les pieds! Ne lever pas les pieds! Ne lever pas les pieds!..." The announcement should say "Next stop, Casualty!" In fact, I do believe it was broken ankles that put an end to it for now. Only twice have I experienced the whoosh-walk in action: best free (mechanical) foot massage in town when you roll on and off. To think that they shut the whole tunnel junction down for nearly the whole of last winter to make it, forcing les citoyens out into the bitter windtrap around the black monster, the Tour Montparnasse. The Brass Monkey Tower. For now, try thinkparis or parisvoice. Online, in English, sometimes hip. Ah yes, speaking of "hip", merci, ma belle Michelle, chère collègue. I value your blogging counsel! I do know where I'm going with this, but it's not ready to go public quite yet. Once a book or two comes through from Amazon UK, once I've got my head around a bit of HTML, once I've sussed out how to do the links and the comments. God forbid - comments?! No, it will not be a geek blog, 'cos I'm not a geek. And certainly not a stream of consciousness. My first one of those ended when I was about two and a half, though some say I never stopped babbling, and the next will not begin for at least another 20 years. I hope. Categories? Yes, well, we'll get to that! I didn't take you for such a Cartesian. But first there's the little matter of deciding whether the interests of my anarchistic mind can be classified! 9:00:24 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.