Idle ramblings...

Remember this? The Cat Came Back
I’ve got one of those here, code name Romeo.
A vagrant tom (complete) who’s taken to camping in my garden and barn.
He sings at night for my (neutered) she-cat, tries to woo her during the day. To no avail.
She’s decidedly not amused.
Neither am I, though he does try to woo me too. He’s quite charming, but he chases my young, very shy and very neutered tom away, then posts himself between the door and poor freaked out Doudou to stop him coming home.
Plus he tends to inscape and hit for the fridge…
I have a serious cat management problem…
Still, I can’t quite help feeling sorry for this obviously homeless Romeo.

Last night, I was mulling all this over, and it reminded me of an operatic aria my mother used to sing when I was a kid - the dawn serenade from Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys, in which some hapless fellow lays siege to his beloved’s closed door.
The words seemed too reminiscent of the cat situation… for words.
But there was an annoying gap in my memory, so I went rummaging on the web for the complete lyrics and found a gem.
Here they are, in both French and English.
Along with a selection of vintage recordings well worth a listen.

I’ll even add one to the collection, which I discovered on YouTube - vintage 1957 by tenor Henry Legay.
It could even be my favorite version – I still hesitate…



Coda: there seems to be some hesitation too as to how this tenor's first name should be spelt.
In French, it would normally end with an i.
However, on his daughter's blog, it is spelt with a y, English fashion.
She should know…

HOME… just that.

Seen last night on TV, the new film by photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand - Home.
About our planet, how life on it works, and what is happening to our island in the universe.

Beautiful, frightening, moving. Great sound track too.

As with the Earth from Above exhibitions, the idea is showing it for free to as wide an audience as possible. So the message gets around.

The link above will take you to the film - for everyone to see and in various languages on YouTube.

Enjoy!

Here goes another backtracking episode.

This, for friends here and elsewhere who wondered where I'd gone…

Xmas has been and gone, welcome 2008 !

I am quietly polishing up my translation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, sniffing away a cold and waiting for news from one of my regular editors. There is - supposedly - a book lined up for me, an Internet thriller. But the confirmation fails to arrive. Unusual as these guys are most reliable. Oh well, there’s still time...
Then comes a phone call for my young readers books editor – “There’s a novel we’d like you to have a look at. It’s yours if you like it.”
As nothing else seems to be coming, I might as well have a look...
I read the book, like it.
Problem is, the deadline is the same as the one for the Internet thriller… except there’s still no news on that front.
Oh well. In doubt, I’ll take it – one bird in hand is worth two in the bush sort of thing…
The contract arrives, and we’re off. Except I’m still worried about this other editor’s peculiar silence.

In the end, on the off chance, I check online my pro account on Gmail… and guess what?
There was a message there from the first editor about the Internet thriller - dumped into the spam box!
It had never happened before.
If the Gmail filter has let through the odd spam over the years, never has it dumped a legitimate message from a known correspondent – much less in reply to an ongoing e-mail exchange!
I'd come to trust the darn thing - fatal error…
And time for a most embarrassing phone call.
I feel bad – guilty bordering on awful –, but there is no cure for too late…
On the rough side, the kids’ fantasy book was a real squeeze, way longer and tougher than the thriller. No more time for anything else, work, work, work - nose to the grind.
On the bright side, it really was fun to recreate puns and silly rimes, invent French names for fantasy places, food, animals, weapons and what have you.
I even got to translate Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky and am quite pleased with the published result.
So, this is how an unexplained and inexplicable Gmail hick-up took me to Wonderland where I disappeared for some months amid The Looking Glass Wars.

(To be continued…)

Everything feels different today. Quite suddenly. There are days like that...

The sky is lighter blue, whiter and vaguely hazy on the horizon.
The air and breeze actually feel warm for the first time this year.
The lush spring green doesn’t look quite so fresh and new - slowly baking to a duller, dryer hue.
The birds are no longer so busy and chatty in the daytime, but there is a lot of buzzing - altered soundscape, insects are doing the talking, wasps, bees... (and the blasted flies from the blasted chicken factory down in the valley, argh!) Butterflies everywhere.

Summer has come at last, I’m happy

Smoking may be bad for you but...



This sure can't be much good either...



It all adds up.
We get it all back in the end.
Under one form or another.