Ah Bank holiday Sunday, just the time for some noisy bastards from the big housing estate to decide to hire the neighbouring pub car park and erect a bouncy castle so their kids can scream like f**k all afternoon and the parents can open up their vast beery gobs and bellow gaseous sounds at each other as they slump only inches apart. The man with the five foot wide beer gut has been enjoying himself burning everything the makeshift barbeque will allow to be reduced to a blackened crisp.

In retaliation, I think that I may find out where they live and pop down there, maybe four in the morning and land a Harrier jump jet in front of their house whilst I play "I want to break free" and popular hits 'to slur and sway along to' by Robby Williams extremely loudly.

"I JUST WANT SOME PEACE YOU MORONS!"

Ahhhh, calmer now...and relax..

Well I have been busy this weekend. I have read two books; one funny one called The Hike by Don Shaw and another short novel that I couldn't put down even though my eyes were begging me to at 2am and that was Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb. This is the first novel I have read by this author and I imagine I will be back at Waterstones seeing what else they have got. Great stuff and sharply observed story about her experiences working in a Japanese Offices of Yumimoto Corporation.

Don Shaw's amusing book took me all over the Peak District on various hikes with two of his retired companions. It even mentioned the housing estate where I grew up near Derby!

Today I have been working on creating a theatre workshop for a production of The Diary of Ann Frank. I am the voice coach for the dialects and I have spent all day ignoring the 'bellows' family and finding important words from the script and finding their translations in Dutch and German.

Alles gute mein bloggerchens.

Phil

Next time I plan to go to the cinema I shall make sure I read the programme properly. The film I went to see last night was on in the afternoon. Doh!

Just off to the Broadway cinema to see a dutch film called De Tweeling. In english, Twin sisters. This is a film set in Germany on the eve of the second world war. I like going to the cinema because I can escape for a while in the dark and be told a story. I enjoy all kinds of films but I have a leaning towards foreign language films. My fave actress is Audrey Tautou and my fave actor Timothy Spall. I also like Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansonn (prob spelt wrong but with Scarlett who cares). I may well have a cool pint of beer en route as the film doesn't start until 7.30. Tot straks, auf weidersehen and beintot mes amis de blog. Phil

How quick the weeks do go. I seem to be in the wars recently. having just got over feeling ill over the weekend I twisted my thigh last in rehearsals so today I am limping about with a grumpy look on my normally happy face and feeling desperate for my holiday in france in a couple of weeks. Finally I got the email I have been waiting for; a confirmation of my hotel booking. I was envisioning getting to sunny Bordeaux and finding my proposed hotel all closed for the season or forever. What a relief.

I threw caution to the wind last night and bought myself a ticket to see the opening night of Miss Saigon in Nottingham. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have stopped beating myself up for spending yet another £22 on the show. I am already going to see it in October with my step mum as a birthday present to her hence the justification process I went through yesterday. hmmmm, spend £70 on October tickets, do i need to spend another £22? Oh well, I will just have to cut back on a few other things and the money will sort itself.

I don't know where today has gone. i have been off ill and had my computer finally returned to me. Everything looks odd and the fonts are all too large. Bit by bit i have been loading all my old programmes back on and getting the beast back in action. Hope you all had a good weekend. Did you miss me? Phil xxD

Two days to the weekend. The week seems to go so quick at the moment and very soon I will be on my hols in France for 10 days. Regarding my computer: it is still resting up in the village computer hospital (and no doubt running up a decent hospital bill for me.) It should be back with me on Saturday and I have been amazed at the things I have got done simply because it is not there to tinker on nights or over a weekend. On Sunday, the first day of its demi-demise I cleaned the house and did loads of yummy cooking including bread, cakes, a sunday lunch with roast chicken. I also sorted out a load of old paper rubbish and took it to the recycling skip and went out on my bike for some exercise. I slept like a log. Makes me wonder how much time I do waste on the computer. I know a lot of it is uploading photos for my photography site and I enjoy that; also I like doing this blogging and reading my new friends (that's you lot dear readers and writers) bloggs but the other time computing, I don't know. Anyway, just a Thursday morning reflection before I start work. I have to keep watching the time as I type as I start my job in 12 minutes time.

I missed the first programme 'French Oddysey' last night as I have to rehearse on Weds. Bummer. My ex wife Ann is taping them for me, bless her.

Ten minutes to go and I want to get my daily fix of enfrance and a wake up coffee. So, see you all later bloggers and bloggettes.

Phil

I am not a blokey bloke.
I can't stand loud and boorish people.
I adore life and love to be kind.
I am really stupid about animals
To the point of sentimentality.
I love French things and language
And I have a very silly sense of humour.
I can be selfish and hide from difficult
Situations but I am getting better at that.
I enjoy being helpful and generous with my
Talents and time.
I have a soft and senstive and loving nature
And often go out of my way to please another.
I treasure moments of peace and life's
Moments of positive illumination.
What am I like?

Sunday found my beloved beast of a Gateway computer decided it wasn't going to play any more and so I am writing this blog from work. If anyone is writing to me on my home email, just to let you know that I won't be able to pick it up for a week. I can respond to any blogs through the work computer however. Phil

Je conseillé. I recommend.

All these albums should be available at FNAC and some of them through outlets like Virgin or HMV.
http://www.fnac.com

I have just found a great UK website that specialises in French house numbers and other written signs to enhance and give votre maison a hint of La Belle France.

http://www.thefrenchnumber.com

Note to Steviebubble: Je n' sais pas le mot francais pour la expression idiotique et juveniles, 'innit'. I am probably quite wrong but I think even their slang isn't that inarticulate. Nawatamean?

What dreams may come
And in your soft face
Your soft brown eyes
Your soul alive I’ll see.

What dreams may come
And in my kind face
My kind blue eyes
My soul alive you’ll see.

What dreams may come
And in our hearts
Our hearts entwined
Forever true will be.

Phil Lowe

Ohmigod innit! (ironic tone applied and I don't actually speak that) but..... heaven is on tv next week. Rick Stein fish chef and culinary hero supreme and France - country of my dreams are combined in French Odyssey. This looks like a francophile foodie festival, pour moi. Oh merde, it is on Wednesday and I have to go to rehearsals and I don't have the facility to tape! Maybe the lovely Auntie Beeb in her great wisdom will create a DVD for me to salivate over somewhere down the line. Pleeeeease! "Chalkie, have a bark in her ear."

Just watched Catherine Tate (great) and Extras (extra great). Waddyayou think of either, innit? Stop it, you don't speak like that. OK. Over to you blogging folk.

I am feeling sort of like a teenager today as I have been flirting with someone in a deli in town. She is cute with lovely brown eyes and long dark hair. We had a laugh the other day about some imaginary shoes that could float the wearer up to high shelves in order for them to retrieve the goods from the top. I 'even' asked her name (very forward of me) and she asked mine. Since then I have been in for a coffee and we have continued the conversation to the point where I promised to bring in some jokey descriptions of adapted shoes that could do the job. I spent all last night working on the designs on paper and left the results with one of her workmates this morning for her to see and hopefully have a laugh at. i am going back this lunch to see what she thinks. Eeeek.

Just got myself a good deal on a digital camera today:D and now I can go completly into overdrive with my photography. not a lot to report today as I am still at work and about to leave to go to another rehearsal. Have a good evening all you bloggers.

I have spent the weekend having a big clutter clearout. Where do all the paper crap come from?

Also finished off a book called Narrow Dog to Carcassonne by Terry Darlington. This follows on from The Diary of Anne Frank and next on the list is Kiss Of The Spider Woman by Manuel Puig. I am reading KOTSW as research for a possible part in the play version next year. If I didn't have to work I could read all day.

This weekend has been a bit of a film fest as well. Watched Donnie Darko for the first time on the telly and this was followed by Moodyson's wierd film 'Happiness'. Unfortunately I was tired and was dropping to sleep as Happiness was showing. Looked interesting in a disfunctional way.

I hired 'Flying Daggers' and it crashed in the middle but what I did manage to see was beautiful.

Today I was encouraged by a woman at the local DVD hiring place to watch 'White Chicks'. I have to admit I am a bit of a film snob and this wouldn't have been my first choice on face value. Just shows how wrong I could be. Brilliant, so funny!

Second exerpt from the Nice journal. This is the next day. I tend to explore a lot on foot and this day I was feeling tired and mooching around the shops. As I went around I found myself getting a bit melancholy and missing the companionship of a woman.

I sat down and took a breather and made some notes about all the posh hotels I passed last night on the way to the Rialto cinema and then walked up that same street and took a picture of the outside of the cinema itself. From here I continued down the Rue Buffa to Place Grimaldi and on to the Rue de le Liberte. Where this last street joins the Avenue Jean Médicin I crossed over and entered the Galerie LaFayette store for an idle wander around.

Further up the Avenue Jean Médicin I was stopped in my weary tracks by the sight of two gorgeous young women in their mid to late twenties; both beauties laughing and chatting in a café window over a coffee and cigarette. They looked so beautiful and feminine and I decided I wanted to spend a few poetic minutes just being in the same place as they. It would cheer me up if nothing else. So I went into Le Grand Café de Lyon et du Centre and ordered myself a 1664 blonde bierre and sat a table or two away and just soaked up the French poetry of their voices and casually gazed in admiration. The sound of some foreign languages can sound so wonderful when you have little or no idea what they are saying. These two just sounded like pure seduction and full of the joys of life. A part of me was lonely and tired and a bit surprised by my morbid thoughts earlier and they really cheered me up. Merci, Mesdemoiselles, merci.

On the theme of love here are two exerpts from a journal i wrote earlier this year about a long weekend in Nice, France.

In part one I had an urge to go to the cinema on the first night in a strange town.

I didn’t really care what I saw but I thought I would ask the guy on the hotel desk where the local cinemas were. He was marginally helpful and pointed out a couple on my map that seemed to be five minutes away both, on or around, the Avenue Jean Médicin. I didn’t really mind what film I saw or whether it was in French or English. I was just going to see ‘something’ and enjoy the experience of being in a cinema in Nice. The first cinema I came across was the Pathé Massena, 31 Avenue Jean Médicin. This seemed to quite small as cinemas go and part of a chain of cinemas in Nice. The others were Pathé Paris and Pathé Lingostiere. This particular one was really busy with people queuing out of the door and they were showing Neverland, Ray and Je prefer ou’on reste amis. My French wasn’t enough to ask about times or prices of tickets and Neverland was showing in French without sous titres.

Apparently they were all in rude health and if I wished to play doctor to their patient and examine them thoroughly I would be more than welcome, but it would cost and all three at once would definitely cost! “Oooh la la” as they say in all French farces. I explained that I had left my stethoscope back at the hotel and left them to ponder how it could have been. I did smile naughtily to myself a lot on the way back to the Hôtel Vendome though. In case you are wondering, the French for stethoscope is stéthoscope and ‘marchez rapidement loin’ means ‘to walk quickly away’.

Their fingers pulled and twined
and in that hold combined
all the love that love could touch
and all the times that meant so much.

Their fingers touched and moved away
with memories of a better day;
a day before their time to part;
a day when heart belonged to heart.

He sees her daily across the room;
Her distant words sound like golden drops of joy;
Her accent soft as Parisian silk and her skin unknown
Except in the depths of his imagination.
She laughs and smiles and her glasses touch softly
The delicate bridge of her nose;
She bends to pick up a pen and those tight jeans
Caress the curves of her bottom;
His inner lusts curl his lips like Elvis
And all sensation hits his pelvis.
He scratches at the desktop in a need to express
How he could kiss her to excess.
The poem now has some small hint of rhyme;
They could be together given time.
She stands behind him and asks what he is writing;
He is speechless and hits the delete button.

Another lunch break spent on the computer at work. rehearsals tonight for Diary of Anne Frank. Thankfully her experiences aren't happening in the lives of contemporary Dutch people. I can't really imagine the idea of 'The eblog of Anne Frank', taking off and they would get caught! "Dear Kitty, I have just uploaded some pictures of us in the annexe. Mr Dussel is really annoyed again because his hard drive has blown up"

No, I think not. Ah well my musing computer best stop tapping your keys and go and earn my pennies.

Phil

The other night I was on the way to the local Co-op store in the village when I encountered a young cat who came out of the bushes in the local church graveyard. Some prose for the cat.

Churchyard cat.

"Hi" said the cat, "It's about to rain and I expect you will never see me again. Take a moment to see in the soft evening light what muscles I have and how I can purr and how my head is pushing against your folded gentle fist. I will mark you with my scent and my intent is to go and watch you shop from a distance and worry you that I may, just may, step into the road. You worry too much human. When you return from your fevered shop I will be here reaching out a paw and needle claws to a little girl in white karate gi or judo gi and then, as you have passed by I will stroll amongst the gravestones and saunter back to my cosy house and snooze. You will not rest and you will concern yourself all evening about my safety while I chomp on crunchy cat food having forgotten all about you. I do remember however, the smell of a soft gentle fist that looked to me like the head of a friendly cat. Sleep well human." zzzzzzzzzzzzzz Love: The young cat.

I went to the staff canteen today to get my dinner and from a wide choice of foods I opted for bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes). For the first time in my life I got told "mash was off". How can mashed potatoes be off? So,instead I had pilau rice and bangers. It may start a new culinary trend or maybe just a bout of indigestion.