The various clever designs purporting to give Departmental election results are only clever before I click on the so-called selections. Window dressing for the most part. All I know – apart from the reams of clever commentary: in this town, the second round of the election will play out between the Parti Socialiste and the ultra-right Front National. In absolute numbers, the FN scored more votes than the PS. The week should be filled with rallying cries, plus extra reams of clever commentary plus posturing from the various candidates.
While I sort out any number of complications in my own life and those of a few other people around me, the characters will have to do the same with their own lives, and I’ll do my best to record their attempts at standing on their individual logs, and rolling them uphill. (This is a clever variation on the old lumberjack trick of log-rolling down a white water river; which is more exciting to watch than attempts at rolling a log on a quiet lake; which, I suspect, ain’t as easy as it sounds.)
When, in combination, both real life folks and fictional ones get too much for me, perhaps I’ll repair to that excellent blog discovery that shone some extra brightness on my day yesterday: a spot called Karl remarks dot com where a London-based gentleman of Lebanese origin produces the kind of irony and satire so dear to my personal sensibilities. Ah yes, ballot boxes shaped like bombs or How to Put Excitement Back Into the Electoral Process.
Meanwhile, as if my battle with reams of personal paperwork weren’t enough, here I am saddled with extra-urgent delivery of reams of paperwork for someone else, plus the Monday schedule that involves learning more than I ever cared to know about what butchers do and how they do it. The fun part of that exercise being the asides from the young man I’m coaching and his comments about the blandness of French meat compared to that of his place of birth. After which I’ll transport myself back up several flights of stairs. Hopefully, make my way to the Post Office with reams of paperwork filled out in proper sequence and addressed to the right office. Prior to discussing topics such as respiratory insufficiency with a Romanian applicant to an interview by the Departmental branch of France’s Ordre des Médecins.
Then, back to see if the characters have figured out how and what, when and where with as little time wasted on why as they can manage.
Oops. Mustn’t forget the dog.
Another coffee? Good idea.
A writer's notebook 