Submarine Port

No accents in this title, so it should show up ok. Gotta love a system so anglo-centric that it doesn’t take any account of the other three quarters of the world who actually use diacritics in their language.

Anyway, away with such trivialities. It’s sunday! I woke up first at 6am today, but rapidly went back to sleep. Tell the butler to call me at 8.30. When 8.30 came I didn’t need the butler as the sun beating down relentlessly on my teeny tiny tent left me with two choices; get up or be cooked alive. Mind you I think I’d make a good sunday roast, with plenty of crackling.

I haven’t done much so far today apart from drink coffee, get a shower, and write this entry. Spoke to Jorneaux (no idea how that’s actually spelled). He heard my linux startup sound and it turns out he’s a Java application developer and linux advocate. He only speaks a little english; a wee bit more than my french, but we discovered we have a common language in the technical jargon of our respective jobs.

Work continues apace on the studio cabling. I have volunteered too make up some of the needed bespoke cabling later. I will have to dust off my soldering skills. Quite looking forward to doing that. i used to love the smell of soldering flux and I’m sure it will take me right back to my days as a test engineer and memories of the pranks we used to pull like whacking the bench with a hammer just as someone was inserting a test probe into a live unit: BANG! and we’d have to scrape him off the ceiling. None of that horse play here of course; we ride entirely different horses in our maturity (when I say maturity, you understand, I use it n the sense of a mature cheddar, as a function of age – and possibly odour – and nothing whatever to do with acting responsibly).

Today, during the part of the day the neighbours do not control (yet) there was some great music going on around the table on the terrace.

We spent the first part of the morning shifting the major items of equipment into the studio control room. David then bean the epic and heroic task of wiring it all back together. I forget the exact number of connections he said, but it was in the order of 1,200. Whichever way you cut it that’s a lot of cable and a lot of connections. Right at this point he is wiring the power into the desks and racks.

Pat made s a wonderful pasta salad with tomatoes and raw mushrooms for lunch and then out came the guitars and also, a bit later, the ukulele, a boudhrain, and a full sized accordian. This latter looks like the most fiendishly complicated and unnatural instrument to play; I can get a tune out of most things, but I baulked at even trying. I did, however, have a bash on the ukulele. This was a proper instrument light years ahead of my fire-engine red 20 quid cheapo uke and the playability and tone reflected this fact in spades. I’m tempted to drag mine out anyway when I get home and have another go at trying to learn it.

So, picture the scene if you will; an acoustic guitar, a ukulele, a boudhrain, an accordian, and a metal singer, all gathered around squinting at an iPhone bashing out a fairly creditable version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Musical moments don’t come much more special.

I also put my tent up this morning, but young Rufus seems to be rather skeptical as to whether I can actually fit my not inconsiderable frame within it. He may have a point actually. I’m feeling a little on the tired side as I write in fact, but it’s way to hot to think of trying to sneak a quick forty winks in the tent. I could possibly poach fish in there, but i doubt whether I could sleep.

No pictures with these updates I’m afraid. It’s such a hassle to try to process them with the netbook and the crappy Linux Photoshop-wanna-be known as Gimp (an entirely appropriate moniker).

…the Hippies are loud tonight. I had to call in the law earlier, but I think my cover is still good. The Chimay smells good, but I have to try to remember the last time…. Only I can’t remember what happened last time.

The moon is rising and waning across the valley, the barbeque is burning it’s way towards the mellow redness suitable to cook on. I’ve been cleaning the grill while David is mixing up his secret weapon marinade. The riotous game of Uno at the end of the table errupts now and then into a storm of laughter. I think Tone is losing badly. I hope hey’re not playing for money yet is all. I used to know how to play that game, but not for many years I’ll have to see if I can pick it up again, it looks like a laugh. Tone is trying ju ju on them, so I think the cards must be against him. Cries of “Schultz!” and “Solo!” punctuate the evening until it all gets too loud and the neighbour starts knock loudly on her fence. She has already had the police out to us tonight. She is going to love it this coming week.

I still can’t quite believe I’m here, but I really am! I mean we really are! John is in the live room playing the guitar. I was playin the Taylor along with him earlier and it was ok really; not my best, but it was singing a couple of times. The Taylor being such a beautiful guitar helped that. I can’t wait to get in the live room and getting stuck into that Musicman.

On arrive! So, here we are after a pleasant enough train journey; again I was wilting by the end, but it could just have een the heat. David and Tone came to fetch us and as we arrived and I opened the car door, I heard the sound of people playing music, a very promising start. A short time later however, the Gendarmerie arrived and said we had to turn the noise down. As much as I have heard about the militant radicalism of the french people I was expecting the petrol bombs to come out and a riot to ensue. What actually happened was that, after a short discussion, we quietened down a bit. Fair play really, here aren’t enuogh of us for a riot yet. Just wait until monday though! Vive La Revolution!

…et departé dans cinq minute, merci – *bing bong*

Rough translation: if we don’t run we’re going to miss it. All thoughts of bandana shopping or coffee or changing currency were abandoned as we strapped on our belongings, held hats to heads and legged it for platform 15 which was way the other end of the station. We made it just as the guard was blowing the last of his increasingly frantic blasts on his whistle. So, pouring with sweat and quite out of breath we made it to our seats and settled in for the journey south.

Just now we are a little way past Lyon and heading into the mountains of the southern massif. No stately progress here unlike the Amtrak. The TGV (Train Grande Vitesse) whisks us along at a blistering 180mph or so. The scenery in this part of France is nice, but I am going to keep my powder dry in terms of mountain shots until we’re safely atop our own mountain for the week.

Tony, Lyndsey, and young Rufus arrived yesterday and brief text reports we’ve had have been very positive. I do like the whole train thing, but at this point I’m half wishing that we’d flown as we’d be there by now. Also a great deal of the train line seems to be in cuts and tunnels which manes sound engineering and ecological sense, but doesn’t do much for the view.

Anyway, I’ll try to upload this when we next flash through an area of 3G coverage.

We’ve stopped moving now. I opened the zip a little earlier, but it is too dark to see anything. I heard a baby crying, but all is quiet otherwise. I don’t think anything more is going to happen tonight. Agent Orange signing off.

Looks like I’ve hit the Bicester village shoppers express service. Lots of designer labels and conspicuous consumption travelling back to the smoke. Against all probability I got a nice window seat and dozed all the way down listening to Patti Smith. There was a teaspoon full of rain which evaporated almost before it hit the ground, but otherwise it looks like a case of fair sits the wind for France and we must aboard.