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Landing in Sunny Monty P
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Almond milk included for scaleWhat a Large Cat
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It appears to be Party Time already 🎉Goodness Would You Look at the Time
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Badly translated, the sign reads: 'You can be a dogmaster in the Space Army'Do Tell Me More…
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BYOG: Bring Your Own GrinderLesson Learned After 8 Months of Lugging Coffee Beans Around Central America
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A Very Scenic Trip to the Local Spar
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No prizes for guessing what would happen the moment I turned my backWatching and Waiting…
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The mayor made all public transport in the city free to residents at the start of the year, and in doing so removed most, if not all, of the ticket machines. The only option is to buy tickets on a mobile app, but the side effect is that nobody shows anything to the drivers and they don't ask to see anything 👀Commuting on the Cheap
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My new job is with a startup that makes software for volunteer management for festivals, marathons, etc. They usually get some free tickets to the events to dish out, and so I've just put myself down for a 10k in April. I hate running.Getting Into the Spirit of Things
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Turns Out the 9A bus takes me to work, the 9B bus does not
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The upside of getting the wrong bus was that I walked past a bakery that makes these gorgeous thingsFougasse ❤️
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Also, comically needyThe Fluffiest Thing I Have Ever Touched
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I'm booked onto a walking tour of the city centre today, should help me get my bearingsTime for Tourism
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I lost the group in the busy square at the beginning, and despite traipsing from one aide of the centre to the other never ran into them again. So that was a €12 bust, and I've learnt the lesson never to do a walking tour unless you pay at the end.Tour Update
But whilst I was stumbling around I did run into the bizarre spectacle of the city hall being simultaneously protested on two different sides by two different groups (Gaza ceasefire on one side, and a large motorcycle club that seemed to be against GMOs from what I could gather from their signs on the other)
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The road outside my flat's been shut for a few days for some sort of film shoot. From all the resources here I don't imagine it's a small indie flick.Lights, Camera, Action
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What Clean-Looking Pigeons They Have Here
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A Challenger Appears
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Couldn't find garam masala so bought some random spices; now I'm stuck with a disconcertingly festive chickpea soup because it turns out I got a Christmas spice blendFirst Time Cooking in France
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What is up with all this shrapnel? You're going down the official Ben Currency Rankings, Euros!I've Only Been Here for a Week
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I now regret choosing a career that requires functional arms every dayClimb Time
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In Latin America people say hello to everyone on the (mini)bus when they get on.International Bus Politeness Power Rankings
In France you thank the driver and say goodbye, shouting from the exit door at the back of the bus all the way to the front.
In the UK you thank the driver whilst passing them.
In the States you don't have a bus. -
Would you believe I've somehow not had any wine since I got hereShopping Trip
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Olives, anchovies and caramalised onions on a flatbread. It smells incredible(y strong), and the name looks like 'piss salad': what's not to love?Pissaladière
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Sleepy Li'l Skin Bundle
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My roomie works Mon–Thu so we celebrate with drinks, then I remember I still have work on Fri. Working from home, though, so I can roll out of bed whenever.Big Friday Energy
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The nutella-filled tube in the background was for breakfast-dessert. I swear I'll go back to being veggie/vegan just as soon as I've tried every single pastry in France.I've Found a Place That Does Even Greasier (and Therefore More Delicious) Fougasses
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I Think I Broke Him
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Lunchtime Run 'n' Sun
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Soon, my pretties…I See Mountains…
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Delicious Luminous Poke
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Bridge Over the River Lez
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TGIM
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This must be what it was like applying for credit cards before 2008Positively Swimming in Plastic
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One of my several ongoing schemes to make moving to the EU post-Brexit way less annoying was to claim German citizenship (thanks to one Oma and one 2021 amendment to their nationality law), but I don't think that's gonna happen any time soon…It'll Be Worth the Wait
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Just look at its little carrying box 😍Tarte aux Framboises
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Thank god for the laundromat machine that lets me pay for my €5.80 wash in 20c incrementsSlowly Taming the Coin Pile
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Pair Programming
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Today's the Day I Peak as an Artist
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Next stop: ever-pungent Paris!Setting Off on a Whistlestop Birthday Tour of the Capitals of Europe
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How Parisian
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…completely uncapturable on my potato of a phone camera. Just trust me that the Alps looked lovely.That Was a Very Scenic Train Ride…
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Met Up with One of My Nicaraguan Tourguiding Buddies for Lunch
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(That's a fully-stocked bar at the top)My Kind of Office Lobby
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I could get used to rent-free living in Paris, here in the bizarre office basement hostelNot a Bad Gaff
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Definitely a far cry from the tech industry crunch time standard 'sleeping bag under your desk' setupNice Than Some Actual Hostels I've Stayed In
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100-ish of us all trying to do a big escape room type thing simulteneouslyTeam Building Evening
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Last time I was in Paris, I went to a house party and missed my coach to Amsterdam the following morning. This time around, there was an post-escape room afterparty in the office with a free bar, and I had another coach to Amsterdam to catch this morning.Dodged the Paris Curse 💪
I managed to get up on time, but realised as I set off that I left my passport in Montpellier. I thought for sure I was scuppered, but they let me on with my driving license.
So, in sum, I'm Amsterdam-bound babyyyyyyy 🎉 And slightly hungover. -
Christ, the North of France is boringThe First Interesting Thing I've Seen for Hours
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I always enjoy when something in Dutch looks just similar enough to English to look sillyWerk beter. Werk flexibel.
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Made it to the Place I'm Staying with 2% Battery left on My Phone 💪
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Amsterdam: Still My #1 Capital City
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Call Me the Cat Whisperer
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Between the Monkey Run and my third Europespedition, I think Michael now has the dubious honour of being featured in the greatest number of trips tracked on this siteMonkey Runner Meetup
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I'm watching Dune: Part 2 and Poor Things, because Zone of Interest was only available in German with Dutch subtitles.The Flat is Out of Action Tonight, So I'm Settling in for a Nice 5-hour Stint at the Local Cinema
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…I was walking down a side road and ran into one giving a bunch of kids a go on his motorcycle, seemingly just for shits and giggles, and it was very cute. They were as stoked to play with the siren as I would be (now, not even as a kid).I'm Sure Dutch Cops Suck in Some Others Ways, But…
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Face Like Thunder
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https://track.bengoldsworthy.net/47xj8go928ql9mq3r20p?from=2653&to=2668Zagreb Throwback
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Just Dutch Looking Silly Again
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Don't Mind Me, Just Mastering My Fourth Public Transport System of the Week 💅
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Catching Up with My Fave Italian
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'InOui' in French sounds like 'ennui', the word for 'boredom'.I Don't Get SNCF's Branding
That said, as someone from the UK, the thought of a boring, predictable, reliable rail network would be quite a selling point
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Vwoosh goes the train boy; choo choo 🚂TGV Mode: Activate
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Also GPS barely seems to work here… this wasn't a problem in the middle of Darién of all places!Northern France: All the Charm of Chernobyl
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Quite a weekend: three cities across three countries, right up western Europe and back, meeting up with a half-dozen pals and making a couple new ones. Consider me thoroughly birthdayed out.Monty Sweet Monty
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Neoclassical architecture is very silly but still quite coolJust An Unreasonably Large Archway
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I'm heading back to the UK today (for my sins), so I'll be pausing the tracker until I come back to Monty P, probably in May.‘Mr Monty P’ Will Return After These Messages
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Ben 1, Brexit nil 💪🥐
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Mini Moving Van
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Flight's delayed an hour, but at least I've got nothing time-pressing on the other end. Gives me time to nurse this absolute bucket of coffee I've just bought (apparently 'large' really means large at Costa)Inauspicious Start
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There's a kick-off party for the summer events season in Paris and I'm a sucker for a soiree, so I'm squatting in the office basement till the weekend (and about to tuck into a big fat kebab 😍)Plot Twist: I'm Not Going Straight to Monty P Just Uet
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You realise nobody else comes in before 10am and feel very justified in your own late-sleeping ways.Pro of Living in the Basement of a French Office?
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We went out of town to a little island. It was very nice, we pootled around on a boat at one point and I didn't take my phone out of my picket once, which must be a sign of quality.Work Do
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There is a fridge full of company-branded beer besides the office bar. The fridge is not locked, even at 2:30am when we all come back from a big work night out. C'est dangereaux.Back to the Office
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I can stay up drinking at the office free bar till 3am and not wake up till 10:30, but still technically be at work on time 💪Perks of Staying in the Weird Office Basement Hostel
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Met up with my old uni flatmate for drinks, and it turns out she was also on a work do at the same place last nightBig City, Small World
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Time to Mont Some Ps 💃
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ICC arrest warrants, long-delayed justice for the Tainted Blood victims, Assange gets another appeal and a helicopter crash that couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Bad day to be a politician, but a pretty good one to be a human.What a Monday
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There was only two of us in the office for my first day back, and almost all the shops and eateries were shut because this Monday was a very bizarre public holiday: originally a Christian thing, then a lot of old people died in a heatwave in the 2000s so it became a 'day of solidarity' where people still had to work, but didn't get paid (wHat?). As far as I can tell it's now up to each company whether people have to work during it or not, but you do get paid if you do. It all seems very weird to me.As for My Personal Monday Experience…
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Oh Boy, I Wonder What Happens in the 'Weiner Room'
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Unfortunately, I think this bakery is going to come 3 (of 3) in my fougasse rankings – not greasy enough by half.Snacktime
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All this foliage with roofs (rooves?) peppered throughout is reminding me, weirdly enough, of Pripyat.View from the Flat Window
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I've see a bunch of these stickers about and went on a bit of a rabbit hole because they're very weird.Stickers
They're put up by a far-right and mostly-Catholic group called 'the Family Union', which is a recent rebrand of a group called 'Protest for all' that have been kicking off about equal marriage etc. since 2012. Their logo looks like Celtic knotwork, and at first I thought the stickers were something to do with a messaging app called Cwtch.
The quote is an take on a famous Simone de Beauvoir line—'one is not born a woman, one becomes one' —to instead read 'one is born a woman, and one becomes one'. It's part of their wider anti-trans campaigning, but it doesn't seem to make sense even in that light: clearly they believe one is only born a woman, and cannot become one, but maybe something is lost in translation.
I didn't recongise the people on the other stickers I've seen, but it's not even clear that Mother Theresa had much to say about LGBT people (beyond what you might expect from a Catholic nun).
My main takeaway is that I'm disappointed that there isn't an actual Family Union in France.Mother, my siblings and I shall not be doing any more dishes until our pocket money rises in line with inflation. Do not even think of calling in our cousins to scab, as it would surely ruin Christmas.
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To get to the office, I get a tram from my flat to a central bus stop, then a bus. Yesterday morning, the trams weren't running so I had to walk. Trams were dotted around seemingly at random, their drivers leaning nonchalantly against the doorways (seemingly feeling no obligation to tell people not to come into the trams and sit down, or even to close the doors). Later on, there was a long line of cars parked in the middle of the road, hazard lights on and all empty. In the distance I could hear some kind of honking, and there were public transport staff all over the place giving advice to the growing wave of now-pedestrian commuters. It was like some sort of bizarre zombie movie.My First French Strike Experience (Maybe?)
However, I also noticed that the first two cars in the queue were both Teslas, and the queue ran along the tram line. I can't really see Tesla drivers being the kind of people to go on strike, and definitely not the kind to abandon their very expensive cars. So perhaps an equally-viable alternative explanation is that some Tesla software update bricked both of the cars at the worst possible moment, blocking traffic and trams until they could be moved. What a time to be alive that that is even a possibility. -
Trying weird crisps! These ones were a bit unnerving but I think they've won me over in the end.The Real Reason to Travel
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Finding a place was a bit of a nightmare, so I ended up with two weeks in this place and then all of next month in another.My Gaff (Until Friday)
Unfortunately, this first place is pretty ideal but the landlady is renting it out as a single unit rather than individual rooms from next month, and I don't fancy splurging on a three-bedroom for myself.
I visited my June place the other day and it's basically what I expected: a pretty spartan house full of students, and fairly messy to boot. But I'm sure I've stayed in worse, and it should hopefully be pretty sociable (even if just the socialness of shared hardship)
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So Culinarily Advanced!
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I read a book recently that called landlordsSleep Merchants
land pimps
, and I thought well that's definitely becoming part of my regular vocabulary. But now I learn that the French call dodgy landlordsmarchands de sommeil
(sleep merchants
), and that's a strong runner-up for best nickname.
The best bit was that unlike in the UK, where I would have most likely heard the term in the context of a BBC News article called something likeConservatives pledge to absolve sleep merchants of liability for all crimes, reinstate droit du seigneur
, here in Monty P it was in the context of a court rejecting a legal case from some landlords against rent controls. Ouaissssss 💪 -
This Company's Name Sounds Like Someone from London Talking About Nepotism
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[Video credit: Keryl]Centre of Town on a Monday Night 🍉
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Place de la Canourgue
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🎵We're in the money, we're in the—🎶First Proper Payday in this New Job!
*checks EUR to GBP exchange rate*
🎵We're in (85%-of-the) money, we're in (85%-of-the) money🎶 -
I've been locked out of my bank account since a few days after I arrived in France, which (as you might expect) has been a huge pain in the ass.Speaking of Finances…
You can read the whole (foul-mouthed) story in my latest blog post, but suffice it to say that technology was a mistake and I will vote for any candidate in the upcoming UK general election who pledges to nuke Google's HQ. -
They might do the worst fougasse I've encountered yet, but they also do the best almond croissants; just look at this gooey li'l blobfish-looking guy ❤️The Bakery Near My Flat
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Based on the Picasso Painting of the Same Name, This Feels Like a Bad Idea
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Also known as 'mattresses', these offences to Mexican cuisine are the absolute pinnacle of French fast food. Current favourite: the Tarticrispy from Chamas Tacos (chicken tenders and lardons with samurai + Algerian sauce, with reblochon and mozzarella cheese and fried onions on top.French Tacos
Now I need to have a big lie down.
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I'm here for the month, but now my proper flat-hunting begins in earnest.Moved into My New Gaff
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But I definitely won't miss the lady from somewhere nearby who would apparently sit out in her garden coughing for hours on end. All day. Every day.Goodbye Old Flat 👋
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Video is the Only Way to Get Across How Weird This House Is
Not mentioned: that first room on the left and another one around the back of the house are only accessible from outside. In the first case I assume it's a converted garage or something. -
Yesterday I was getting smacked about by hayfever like I owed it money. Even my prescription-strength antihistamines were pretty useless; I had to take two, which is a first for me.Hiding from Pollen
Today's been a bit better, but I think maybe I need to buy a gas mask or something.
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Out for a Hike
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I saw one of my new flatmates walking around with a pounch on his belt at lunch and asked what was in it, so he pulled out a pair of binoculars and said he was going out for a hike. I had nothing on so decided to join him on a whim.A Very Successful Sponteneous Day Out
Partway along I found out that he was walking to a nearby village to return a vehicle registration doc that he found on the ground at a music festival last night (which had the person's address in it), and just decided to turn it into a hike.
When we got there they invited us in and gave us loads of food and drink, 20 eurobucks and a lift back to Monty P. It all felt very Serbia-esque in the best way, and the guy said to come pop in it we're ever back in the village. -
Maybe 11 thimble-sized portions?That's a Very Optimistic 11 Portions There, Kellogg's
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I'm currently torn between 'Weasley house from Harry Potter' and 'student Waco'Still Trying to Decide What the Vibe of This Place Is
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Perhaps the correct plural is Les Mondes?The Big Stack of Le Mondes at the Bus Top Feels Very Classy Indeed
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There's 10 of us in total:My New Flatmates/Fellow Compound Residents
- me, your intrepid narrator
- a French–Floridian, and it's exactly as jarring a combo as you might expect
- a local French guy, who is studying to be a sommelier and yet still somehow not the Frenchest one here
- another French guy from Normandy, who definitely is the Frenchest one here
- the Colombian guy I went for a walk with yesterday, who the landlady keeps insisting is Italian
- an Italian geologist Ph.D student who doesn't speak any French
- a Venezuelan couple
- the Turkish couple who live in the loft
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An octopus and spiced tomato pie from a coastal town just up the road from here. 7/10 pretty okayToday's Treat: Tielle Sétoise
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It would have been rude not to join them. TGIM.I got back from work and both the French guys were sat in the garden drinking wine
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Playing a card game with the French is fine, provided you want to spend 15 minutes animatedly arguing about the rules after every single playExercise in Frustration
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And a window I could fall out of if I stretch backwards too vigorouslyI have acquired a desk with a view
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Now I just need to wait for the Current Account Switch Service to do its thing, hoovering all of my dosh out of the Starling account like the Mega-Maid scene from Spaceballs.New debit card finally arrived
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(I'm looking at ferries to Morocco and Algeria)Hell yeah I do
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Making the Venezuelans Feel at Home
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Starting my day like I'm in Deus Ex or something.Big Fan of My Automatic Blind Upper-Downer
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Incredible what a desire to procrastinate from work can do for youDid a Big Kitchen Clean-Up
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But at least now my soles won't get dirty when I go downstairs barefootIt Almost Lasted 12 Hours
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Even the Lights in This House Are Weird
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RIP dreams of sandcastle-buildingThere Go My Weekend Beach Plans
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Can't wait for my four sessions of acupuncture/osteopathy/chiropracty/whatever 'etiopathy' is per year.Decided to Check Out the Healthcare App I Get Through Work
No homeopathy, but only because that's inexplicably super popular in France and (as far as I can tell) is covered by the normal social security.
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even if the weather is crap todayThis Eighth-Floor Apartment is Making a Strong Case for Itself
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Just imagine how much of a deranged pervert you have to be to watch what happened to the UK and think 'yeah I'll have what he's having'EU Elections Are Tomorrow
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Perfect Lazy Sunday Vibes
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Drinking beers in the sun with a bunch of Latinos is really taking me back…Birthday for the Venezuelan
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Probably the Colombian guy addressing all of his presents as 'from: UNICEF'Funniest Part of the Venezuelan Guy's Birthday?
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Yussssss I Can Finally Access My Dosh Again
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I've already smooshed loads of these; no dengue yet though (fingers crossed)This Explains All of the Huge Mosquitos
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I looked at a few different places, but only one ticked all of my boxes and I had my offer accepted yesterday! Pics to follow when move in, but here is the ad for it. And all for less than 600 European funbucks per month (all-inclusive); gotta love that non-pathological French housing market and strict inner-city rent controls.New Gaff: Acquired 😎
It's not available till Jul 12 though, so I'll have to spend the first couple weeks of the month living in the ol' Paris basement.
Once I finally have a permanent address, that let's me finally crack on with a flurry of other admin tasks (registering for social security, validating my visa, etc.) -
I hadn't planned to get involved in anything political here (e.g. joining a union) until I was a bit more settled, and had a better grasp of French. Unfortunately, France has decided to go absolutely nuts before I even have a permanent address.I picked a bad time to become an immigrant in France
The short version is that the far-right smashed the centrists in the EU elections at the weekend (coming first with double the vote share of President Macron's party in second place). Within an hour of the results coming out, Macron announced that he was dissolving the National Assembly and holding snap elections at the end of this month. This has, to put it lightly, stunned everyone.
As far as I can tell, Macron's party lost its majority in the Assembly so have had to rule by coalition (e.g., they had to pass a draconian immigration bill at the start of the year to appease the far-right, which has already served to make my life slightly more annoying).Big Maccers appears to be gambling that the fear of a far-right victory will get everyone to unify behind his centrists and give them back control. However, he's personally incredibly unpopular, the far-left despise him and the leader of the centre-right party has just publicly floated the possibility of an alliance with the far-right, smashing through a decades-old red line dating back to Charles de Gaulle like the shittest Kool-Aid Man ever.
The various leftist parties, movements and unions have all united under the banner of the New Popular Front, which based on the previous united front will last up until the moment someone decides to mention Israel–Palestine, whereupon it will implode into leftist infighting. Plus ça change…
Montpellier itself has a socialist mayor and a lot of students so is presumably not a key area for the far-right, but there was some neo-Nazi violence at a music festival the other weekend so I imagine tensions will rise over the next few weeks. And, ultimately, whilst I can't vote and am not necessarily of the complexion that the far-right tends to take issue with, I am an immigrant trying to build a new life here, and (selfishly speaking) the far-right are a threat to that.
So politics has set its own timetable, and I must play to it. For the first time in my life, I find myself a member of a political party: La France Insoumise. Marchons, marchons !
The poster, from one of major trade unions, reads:Resolutely antifascist! Yesterday just as today
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I'm no partidista and I've had to fast-track my usual due diligence (I don't quite think Google Translating parts of a manifesto counts as sufficient research), so perhaps I'll sour on LFI at some point, but for now they seem sufficiently non-doctrinaire, and their leader seems sufficiently pointy, for my tastes.French Political Priorities
Plus membership was free and they have a very nifty online portal for organising. Based on this list of skills it allows you to declare, I'd say I'm in pretty safe hands.
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I'm headed to (near) the seaside for an evening of what seems to be some sort of traditional reversed bullfight, where the bull is the celebrity hero and chases people around to operatic music.Off to the (Camargue) Races
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On second thoughts, I'll take two thimbles' worthOne beer, please
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Now for the Junior League
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I suspect he is not supposed to be there
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I've Never Seen a Cow So Angry
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Probably a coincidence, but this bull (cow?) does appear to be wearing a trans pride ribbon 🤔Montpellier Pride is Tomorrow…
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It was touch-and-go for a while there, but the left parties finally announced that they will form a New Popular Front for the upcoming elections. Polling currently has them in second place behind the far-right, comfortably ahead of Macron's centrists in third, and the French columnists are already likening his decision to David Cameron's decision to call the Brexit referendum what feels like a thousand years ago now.Today in French Politics
Paris is burning, which means it is a day of the week that ends with 'day'. The mayor is understandably very pissed off that this election is taking place just before Paris is due to host the Olympic Games. Several thousands of people turned out in Monty P this evening whilst I was watching angry cows.
The centre(ish)-right party has imploded over its now-former leader's call to ally with the far-right: the rest of the party are split down the middle, he's been kicked out and he's now taken the party to court to reverse his expulsion like the kids at school who used to get teachers to reverse Yu-Gi-Oh! card trades. In a comedy highlight, he has locked himself in the office and refused to leave for the past couple days. -
Today is the last day of the Living Architecture Festival, where a bunch of the usually-closed private villas (hôtels) in the old city center are opened to the public and host little architectural installations. Seems like a good excuse to spend the day exploring, so buckle in for a bunch of pictures of pretty buildingsFestival des architectures vives
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Montpellier is home to either the oldest medical school in the world, in the West or the oldest still-operating med school in the world, depending on where you look. It's at least 800 years old, but seems like it dates back further than written records. There are tours of the whole building (and anatomy wing) available, but only group ones for 10+ people, so if nine readers of this want to get on that then hit me up; until then this small peek will have to doMontpellier Medical School
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I regret not wearing any suncream for this excursionNot a cloud in the sky
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But it does give the city centre a bit of Secret Garden-esque mystiqueShame to keep all these cool courtyards locked up most of the year
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Musée Fabre
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My registration is in: I'm a union man once more after a couple years out in the cold. Specifically, Solidaires Informatique, the IT-focussed section of Solidaires.🎶 For the Union Makes Us Strong 🎵
Before I started looking into it, I very much had the received British wisdom that everyone in France was a member of a least three unions, and that's why nobody ever did any work and was always on strike. It turns out that's wrong! (They never do any work because it's too hot and the food is too rich)
France actually has a comparatively low rate of unionised workers; around 9% of workers, down to 5% if considering only the private sector. But there are bloody loads of unions, grouped into eight (con)federations, of varying degrees of reformist to radical. For comparison, the UK has a unionisation rate around 22% and a couple of federations.
Despite this, the French trade unions are very muscular. Their leaders are often more positively regarded than French politicians, who have to negotiate with them carefully. In large part, this is because the five of the largest confederations are recognised by the government as representative of all French workers. As such, everybody in the country receives the benefit of large-scale collective bargaining and lobbying for employment rights, even if only a militant minority actually agitate for them. Also, the unions do not rely on subs from their small pool of members, as many receive most of their funding from government.
French workers also have a constitutionally-defined right to strike, whether or not they are a member of a trade union; two more more employees is enough to make a strike a legally-protectedcollective…cessation of work
. Advance notice is only required in certain industries and the public sector, hiring scabs is illegal and loss of pay is limited to the time spent on strike, even if only an hour.
No doubt completely unrelatedly, French labour law is very generous. 35-hour workweeks, generous overtime, regular breaks and a a lot of annual leave. Up to three years of sick pay. 11 public holidays. Time off for studying French (for we étrangers; the one good part of the recently-passed immigration law), for union work, to care for relatives or mourn loved ones or celebrate weddings. Sabbaticals after a certain number of years. And so it goes. When the government rose the pension age from 62 to 64 last year, people lost their shit and reverting (and aiming to lower it to 60) is one of the key parts of the Nouveau Front populaire platform; in the UK, the pension age is 66 and due to rise.
So back to Solidaires, which isn't one of the big national confederations but did seem the most interesting to me. Its outside position means it is more radical, and its syndicalist structure appealed to me as a would-be Wobbly. They seem to be willfully non-institutional, instead focussing on grassroots movement organising and collaboration with other activist movements. Sounds like a good group of lads to get in with…
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The landlord finally came over today to replace the missing slats in my bed, so now I get to spend my final 10 days here not falling through the frameBetter Late Than Never
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If you turn the timer to more than 3 minutes, it gets stuck and never runs out, which is really good when you start chatting to someone and realize 15 mins later that your pasta is still getting blitzed. A nice convenient way to get all of our week's allowance of radiation in one go.I Discovered a Cool New Feature of Our Microwave
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I've been busy with boring things like working all week, but it's been a fairly spicy week in the lead-up to the French elections. Lots of news articles in French here, alas.France Elections Update
Macron's gamble seems to have backfired: his group are still trailing in third place in polls, it's not particularly close (see chart; take polls with pinch of salt) and his own allies seem pretty cross(aint) with him. Despite his claims to be a centrist, he has responded to the surprise popularity of the New Popular Front (NPF) by adopting talking points from the far-right and trying to claim that the far-right and the NPF (which he insists are far-left, against the assessment of his own government) are the same. That's right, a self-professed centrist turns out to be happier aligning with the far-right when push comes to shove! In other shocking news the sky remains bleu and pigs remain stubbornly grounded.
The NFP has remained remarkably united, although there was some drama when the candidate selections were announced and La France Insoumise were accused of launching an internal purge. The Front's programme includes immediate reversal of several unpopular Macron policies like the increase of the pension age, as well as huge increases in public expenditure to be paid for by new taxes on corporations and wealth: pretty standard leftist stuff, but there are also some fun things in there like a longer-term goal of eventually abolishing the presidency entirely and creating a Sixth Republic in the ashes of the Fifth (which for complicated historical reasons is kind of like an elected monarchy).
The NFP programme's foreign policy is pro-Ukraine and pro-Palestine. There was a bit of bombshell when a former Nazi-hunter and French national hero, who not so long ago was writing editorials warning people against voting for the far-right, announced that he would be supporting them this time because they are pro-Israel. For reference, this is a party that has had to drop several candidates for antisemitism, and which was founded by an inveterate Holocaust denier and his ex-Waffen-SS mates. Truly today's politics makes for strange bedfellows.
That said, France does seem to have much more of a problem with antisemitism than the UK. Whilst, yes, Macron did push through a controversial law several years ago that classified anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism (which muddies the waters somewhat), there has indisputably been a markéd increase (particularly since October 7) in incidents that go far beyond arguably mis-classified political activism, like graffiti, a synagogue firebombing and a particularly horrific attack on young girl in Paris last week that has understandably dominated headlines ever since. I've seen some pretty bonkers figures quoted, like a 1000% increase in reported incidents and a 430% increase in French Jews applying to emigrate to Israel compared to the previous year. I don't really have a pithy conclusion here or an analysis of why it might be, but I thought it was worth acknowledging.
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…the journalists at Libé seem to be having a jolly old time dredging out all the least-flattering photos of Macron they can find to illustrate their articlesOn a lighter note…
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French elections, for reasons I'm not entirely clear on, are super coalition-y. Just look at this insanity, and this is only showing 1½ of the various coalitions in the offing (shoutout to the Ensemble! party within the New Popular Front that has the same name as their rival coalition). If you look at the Wikipedia article now, they've condensed it down through copious use ofHow French Elections Work
such-and-such party and allies
.
Between now and the 30th (next Sunday), it's all to play for and everyone can vote for whoever. Then, there's a week-long second election period between only the two winners of the first one, which concludes on Jul 7th (the following Sunday). So it's kind of like some sort of single transferable vote, where voters get to vote for their favourites in the first round and then their preferred from the top two. I like it.
What this likely means in practice, given that it seems the far-right and the New Popular Front are on track to win the first round, is that the second election week will be an incredibly intense battle between political extremes. In related news, I am a smart man who picked a very good week (unintentionally) to go stay in Paris 😪
Lastly, these elections are for the French National Assembly—their parliament—so no matter what happens, Macron will still be president; the situation of a President and Prime Minister hailing from rival parties is known as 'cohabitation', and it's happened a few times before, but not often.
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I am Inordinately Proud of This Scrambled Egg
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Finally En Route for a Much-Postponed Day at the Beach
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La plagette
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The Olympics are taking place in Paris next month, and the unfortunate swimmers of the world will be paddling in the rather grim Seine river. Macron promised a while ago that he would go for a swim to prove that the water is safe, and tomorrow is the promised day: in response, Parisians are pledging to shit in the river in protest. Aux armes, citoyens ! 🇫🇷🫡🇨🇵Vive la France 💩
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My First Visitor
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Chilling
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Timed it perfectly completely by accident 😎Peyrou Sunset
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Peyrou Sunset #2
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Untitled
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The place is a bit of a tourist trap, but the building itself is very very cool.Cellar
[Photo credit: Hendo]
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I hate Google and everything they stand for, but the Google Translate image view is genuinely the coolest thing ever. Here is the 'before', stupid font and all…The One Good Piece of Modern Technology #1
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…and here's the 'after'. Real Star Trek shenanigans.The One Good Piece of Modern Technology #2
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with another seasoned expertTesting Out the Ethiopian Culinary Offerings in Monty P
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Mouldy Coffee Grounds Are Pretty Wild
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Landlady: I know, I'll stick it in a three-walled alcove on the opposite side of the room to the bed, desk and everywhere else someone might want light!Landlady: Hmm Where Should I Put the Only Light in this Room?
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The poster reads:I Appreciate the Bluntness of the Messaging
The racists vote, do you?
At its core, there are two ways to win an election: get more people to vote for you, or fewer to vote for the other guy.
There are lots of ways to do the latter, some legitimate and some not. The simplest illegitimate way is to just threaten people away from voting, but that's a rather blunt tool. If you are already in power you can do effectively the same thing in more subtle ways: if you're evil and competent (like the US GOP) you can restrict polling station availability; if you're evil and incompetent (like the UK Tories) you can introduce voter ID that accidentally prevents veterans and your own former Prime Minister from voting.
The best thing to do is win over supporters of the other guy, which achieves both goals at once. There's some element of that at play in this election, but with polls suggestion that the second election will be between the far-right and the leftist coalition, I don't imagine there is much chance of people switching from one to the other at this late stage. But there will always be the centrists to try and woo once Macron's coalition are out of the running.
But, in this election, the real focus is on that first method: winning over the undecided. French voter turnout in recent elections has been around 50%, sometimes dipping below, so there are huge numbers of non-voters to be won over by either side (and I've seen it claimed that this apathy is a result of the aforementioned semi-monarchical presidential system). This is where I think the NFP might have an advantage: if you're a Frenchman dead-set on giving fascism another go, you've probably already been voting for it when given the chance, and ditto if you're really keen on squeezing the rich until their pips squeak. But if you're just a normal person eking out a living in the banlieues, this might just be the election with options stark enough to motivate you to take part (and there will certainly be a lot of party activists knocking on your door to argue that you should).
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The campaign rumbles on. Foreign media are starting to twig on to how messy this election is going to be. But as much as the worst-case scenario here is very bad indeed, the best-case presents an opportunity for a real societal transformation that I didn't hold our much hope for ever seeing happen in Europe.Election Update
The party I joined, largely out of convenience, have had a bit of a bumpy ride. After their alleged internal coup of candidates, several of those not selected are running dissident campaigns against the officially-sanctioned candidates in their districts. As far as I can tell, they're doing this using all the same New Popular Front branding and imagery, and LFI have repeatedly tried to sue them into stopping only for the courts to rule that there's nothing they can do. Which seems pretty Wild West, but hey ho. Similarly, the far-right have launched a calculator that supposedly shows how much people stand to lose on their pension in the event of a Popular Front government, but it apparently just makes up numbers. This is like when the Tories changed their official Twitter account name and logo to 'factcheckUK' during the debates.
But France Insoumise have also had to pull one candidate for past antisemitic Tweets, and one of the more controversial candidates that they did decide to run is a guy with a past conviction for domestic abuse (who has since withdrawn, but whose replacement is now facing a dissident campaign by a feminist collective). One of the biggest questions facing the Popular Front is who would be their Prime Minister if they win a majority. I think the bookie's favourites might be Jean-Luc Mélénchon (founder of France Insoumise, the largest party in the Front) or Raphaël Glucksmann (head of the Socialist Party, who did the best in the EU elections the other week). Mélénchon is a controversial dude to say the least, though I don't think I know enough yet to say whether it's media character assassination a la Saint Jezza or whether it's justified. It does seem to me like he would have a strong case for PM given that he personally very narrowly missed out on third place in the last presidential elections, and his party is the biggest, but clearly that would be a tough sell to the rest of the coalition.
I mainly joined LFI because they were large, membership was free, they have a very nifty organising tool and they didn't seem to be tankies. I now learn that Mélénchon is/was a 'Lambertist', which is some sort of French Trotskyist sect (ugh, Marxists are exhausting). I feel a little like George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia, where he arrives in Spain to fight fascists and joins a random group:I knew that I was serving in something called the POUM. (I had only joined the POUM militia rather than any other because I happened to arrive in Barcelona with ILP papers), but I did not realize that there were serious differences between the political parties
This later bites him on the arse when the Stalinists launch a purge against their own side, declare the POUM to be secret fascists and drive him to flee the country.
Anyway, this poster apparently shows what the Popular Front think are the key campaign issues in this area:New Popular Front! To improve our lives. Protect the forest. Pension at 60 years. Ceasefire in Gaza. Save our public services. Megabasin moratorium [I had to look it up too]. Vote & vote.
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I'm a big fan of the Russian constructivism reference in this poster, it makes me feel like my Art GCSE wasn't a complete waste of time after all.Tankie Graphic Design
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Yuuuuuuge Tomatoes
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Untitled
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I daresay that French pâtissiers value form over functionBefore and After
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The first day of voting started yesterday in the French overseas territories, and turnout has been high; as much as double the previous election in some places. Voting in mainland France opened a couple hours ago and will run till 20:00 in large cities. I'm not sure how soon votes are expected.Election, Round #1
Also, I got my description of the two-stage election system a little wrong: a candidate can win in this first round outright if they get over 50% of the vote on a turnout above 25%, and the second round is between all candidates who received over 12.5% of the vote. However, most races are expected to roll over into next weekend's election, with a huge number currently predicted to be three-way races (see pic).
So slightly more than I've been suggesting all along, assuming they get the third-place drubbing they're predicted to, it looks like the second round results will really come down to whether the so-called centrists choose to rally behind the far-right extremists or the centre-to-far-left coalition; there are, at least, some suggestions that a majority of their supporters would be willing to do so.
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You've been adequate, but I shan't miss your kitchenGoodbye, Weird House
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72EUR is a big annoying fine, but at 1.60EUR/ticket for the public transport I'm still quids-in from my commutes to and from work alone, let alone all other travel. Slightly annoying that I've tried to apply for the free residents pass twice though and been rejected both times for not having the specific paperwork they require yet, but hopefully I'll get that sorted by the end of Jul.My Luck Finally Ran Out 😳
But it is quite funny that the address of the department on the ticket is Leon Trotsky Street; score 1 to the Trots 😤
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…with chicken instead of apple and fried onions instead of biscuit.This rice bowl is more like an apple crumble…
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…and the pumps are busted so I flooded the showers and spent most of my morning mopping. At least it's cooler here than Monty P.Day 1 of My Parisian Mini-Jaunt
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The far-right (RN) came first with 33% of the total vote, the New Popular Front came second with 28% and Macron's coalition came third with 21%. Of 577 seats available, 76 were won outright: 37 by the far-right; 32 by the NPF and 2 by the Macronists. There are 311 3-or-more-way run-offs, with the bulk (244) being between triangulaires between the far-right, Macronists and the NPF. Turnout hit highs not seen since the mid-'90s. Montpellier has two islands of NFP in a sea of RN (see pic).The Results Are In
By 18:00 Tuesday, third-place candidates will have to declare whether they will be withdrawing or not. The Macronists seem divided: some have spoken against doing so, making a ridiculous comparison between the threat posed by a far-right party on the verge of seizing absolute power and one far-left party (La France Insoumise) that forms part of a wider coalition; others (ironically perhaps the best of the party) have already announced their withdrawals. There are also three-way races where the Macronists have done better than the NPF candidates, and I should hope that in those situations the NPF candidates will step aside (even though it is the Macronists' fault that we're in this position at all, both by calling the election and by creating the conditions in which the far-right have thrived for years); so far 120 NPF candidates in three-way run-offs have withdrawn, compared to 52 Macronists.
However, even if all of those third-place candidates were to step aside, it still looks as though the far-right will win a majority; even increasing turnout may not help, as the bulk of this first round's increase bolstered the RN. The RN's leader has said that he will only take the role of prime minister if he wins an absolute majority. One should never trust a fascist, but the most viable approach now seems to be denying them that so that a hostile hung parliament can effectively grind government to a halt, stopping them from implementing their plans. Someone at work today mentioned that the Belgians had managed to go almost two years without a government twice, so there is a precedent of that sort of thing (and, of course, the US legislature has barely functioned in decades).
So this week will be even more intense as the NFP try to win over the undecided, the RN try to consolidate their advantage, and the centre-right and third-place Macronists decide whether to hold their noses and support a Republican front or whether they'd actually be quite happy under an extreme right-wing government as long as they're business-friendly. The best available outcome short of a major upset seems to be an utterly paralysed government. Whether that would give the time needed to identify and address thecollective failure
represented by almost 11 million votes for the far-right, or whether the resulting chaos would just serve to bolster their support in the next elections, I don't know.
But I think we're in for a bumpy ride no matter what. And in other news, the US became a monarchy today.
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After an intense couple days, there are now 94 three-way run-offs and 1 four-way run-off (after 132 NFP and 83 Macronist third-placers stepped down).Elections Update
Shenanigans were plentiful, with perhaps the most brazen being the RN candidate who leaked a message to media saying he would be withdrawing, then registered his candidacy after the other two candidates had also done so. And then one of their other candidates withdrew after photos of her in a Nazi cap got out.
The strategy of the right seems to be to continuously try to associate the New Popular Front (a broad coalition of parties, of which La France Insoumise is the largest member) with Jean-Luc Mélenchon (who founded LFI, as well as the coalition that the NPF grew out of, but who doesn't seem to be the formal leader any more, or even running in this election). And the centrists help them with this, claiming that they would be happy to withdraw in races where they are running against aRepublican [i.e., non-LFI] candidate
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As part of this, the RN leader has refused to debate the leader of the Greens (also part of the NPF) because he doesn't consider herrepresentative
(and definitely not because she used to live in an RN stronghold and has literally written a book about how their grift works). He was insisting that he get to debate Mélenchon instead, which wouldn't have made much sense, and he's now going up against Attal and Raphaël Glucksmann. Unless he takes his ball and goes home again. -
2024 is a record year for elections, with over 2 billion voters casting ballots throughout the world everywhere from Iran to the USA. Fittingly, I'm involved in three of them: the UK; the US; and France. But I've only been talking about the French election lately, which wasn't even on my bingo card at the start of the year.Ben Goldsworthy: Foreign Election Interferer
Partly this is because the US election is still several months away, and because I'm currently in France and not in the UK. But, more fundamentally, it's because of the three elections I'm taking part in this year, the French one is the only one that feels of any consequence (and, despite it being the only one I can't vote in, it also feels like the one I can have the most participation in).
When I wake up tomorrow, the Tories will almost certainly be gone after 14 years of incompetence, corruption, performative cruelty and state plunder; my whole adult life and that of my generation. It seems the only question remaining to be answered is just how cathartically huge a wipeout they are facing, and how much of Ba'ath Party majority Labour will end up with. But tomorrow we will have, as our new Prime Minister, one of the most principle-free ghouls in a political environment that offers no shortage of them. A charisma vacuum draped perversely in the corpse of a party and historic labour movement that he has methodically betrayed and crushed. It's like someone showing up at a house party wearing your friend as a skinsuit, and expecting you to go along with it.
There are only three races whose outcome I'm interested in tonight: Holborn & St Pancras, where former Apartheid activist Andrew Feinstein is standing against Starmer; North Islington, where Jeremy Corbyn is standing as an independent; and Blackburn, where ex-ambassador-turned-torture-whistleblower-turned-human-rights-activist-and-occasional-crank Craig Murray is running. But even if all three win their races, they will be pretty powerless. The nation-size closing-down sale that is the UK will continue on; perhaps Starmer and Streeting can get a few bob for whatever remains of the NHS.
Then, in a few more months (provided Biden doesn't die or drop out in the interim), I get to choose between a genocidal monster whose brain is melting on live TV and a convicted rapist and fraudster who openly talks about how he plans to be dictator if re-elected. The less said about the US election, the better.
But in France, there are ✨actual stakes✨. There are parties with ✨rival political projects✨ and an ✨engaged and passionate electorate✨. It feels a little odd to be praising those things in the face of a potential far-right victory this weekend, but the world will keep turning after the election. The unions are already mobilising to protect the most vulnerable—minorities, the sanspapiers, visible activists—and the militants of the New Popular Front and its constituent parties aren't just going to disappear on Monday morning. 🎵Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of general strike? 🎶
As the Zapatistas say, 'whoever you vote for, organize!' And if there's anyone I trust to know how to make themselves ungovernable, it's the bloody French.
[Photo credit: shared in a union groupchat]
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It looks like not even the rooftops of Paris are safe from Saharan dust storms
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Now that's the kind of insane optimism one expects from a Brexit hardliner
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Untitled
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Lock-In
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There's something quietly amusing about watching a film about a French labour organiser in the office lounge…Film Night
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Good thing I got these half-off in a closing down sale. Designer clothes are a mug's game.What on Earth Did I Sit On?
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30,000 additional cops on the streets. At least 50 violent attacks during the campaigning period. Threatening lists published by the far-right of lawyers and election demos taking place tonight. The highest turnout in 40 years. Whatever happens, tonight is going to be eventful.Buckle Up, Homestuck
I'm just loading up on a couple beers and a big French taco, then I'm off to Place Stalingrad for the NPF's soirée electoral. -
It's only a projection, but the New Popular Front might have actually just bloody done it 😮 This is the Left not just not-losing, but actually winning!What a Tweeeeest
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I went to Place de la République instead for the non-authorised demo. The mood is jubilant. Cheers erupt every few minutes for whatever reason, I think new results being announced. I've found a Spanish couple so I've been practicing that, and it turns out I can understand way more French than I thought. The police are gradually moving in though and there's been a few bangs.I've ended up with the antifa security team
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(from me)The guys selling beers here are doing a roaring trade
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Cops All Down the Block
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[h/t Ellie]Untitled
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RE: the poster (which saysTrès bloody bien
vote New Popular Front to change everything
): they bloody better! They've got five or so years to figure out how things even got this close, because I don't think 'suddenly there were 12 million racists' is gonna cut it.
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République
[Video credit: Not me] -
The antifa-pals went off to deal with an issue and the riot cops were starting to close off exits, so I figured it was time to head off (plus I've got work in the morning).Bon nuit, et bon chance
But this has been a phenomenal (and very unexpected) result. And even in the dismal UK election, there were a few real rays of light to be found. Even Iran's election this week produced a surprisingly positive result.
Obviously, all is not sunshine and rainbows now that some leftists and reformists are in government. But I daresay that the future feels more promising to me tonight than it has for years, if not ever. There are several years' breathing room now in which to consolidate forces, build coalitions and work to improve people's material conditions and draw them out of the clutches of the extreme right…
…if we (royal We) don't fumble the ball. -
Coming up to ten years since we started uni 👴Minimuff
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Perilous Parisian Stairs (after you've had a few)
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I'm already an IT guy living in a basement, and my two-takeaways-per-day habit was getting a bit pricey, so I've decided to go all-in on the 80c ramen.Playing Into Stereotypes
They're not great.
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They are as snazzy-looking and delicious as you might expectThe bakery nearby does croissants and pains au chocolate with raspberry jam, pistachio goop and Nutella inside
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We're still waiting to find out who will be the new Prime Minister, but I've not been following it as much because it's a bunch of people I know very little about jockeying for position and I have better things to do.Post-Election Shenanigans
The incumbent PM tendered his resignation after the election, but Macron rejected it, theoretically just for stability's sake with the Olympics coming up. But there are growing worries that Macron (who has the power to appoint anyone as PM, provided they can hold the support of a majority of the Assembly) may be planning to disregard the Left's victory and instead just appoint a right-wing or centre-right PM.
The unions have set a deadline for the appointment of a new left-wing PM of Jul 18the, after which they are talking about disrupting the Games and holding a 'third election', again with murmurs of a general strike. France dodged a lot of unrest when the far-right lost the election, but if Macron goes through with his coup we'll probably see it anyway. Is that his plan, to try and delegitimise the Left and regain support for his centrists? Or is he just desperate and clutching at straws? Hard to say. -
🎵 And the blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France 🎶I Have Managed to Wound Myself on a Baguette
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✨ New Gaff ✨
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This absolute 🏆 unit 🏆 left me a fridge of beer, muscat and other liquor, along with a cupboard full of pasta. 10/10Shoutout to the Guy Who Had My Room Before Me
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On April 15, 2022, I handed back the keys to the flat I'd been living in for three years and finally left Lancaster after eight. I quit a hated consultancy job and made plans to go for a long-delayed and much-needed gap year.*Deep Exhale*
Since then, across seventeen countries, two continents and countless towns and cities, I:- went vegan for a year;
- learnt to ride a motorcycle, and then rode a glorified lawnmower across the Scottish Highlands;
- fulfilled a long-delayed dream of Interrailing;
- spent almost a year in Central America;
- learnt Spanish, how to surf, how to dive and how to sail
Today, a little over two years later, I've signed a year-long contract for a new flat here in Montpellier. For the first time since leaving Lancaster I have a place to call my own again. I have a decent idea what I'll be doing and where I'll be living in a couple months' time, in a couple quarters, and even this time next year. And I have a full-time job.
So I'm giving the stability and predictability game another go. We'll see how long it lasts…
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When I started this trip, I didn't really think about when I would call it finished. Now that I have my permanent address and I've been here for a couple months, this feels like as good a time as any. But this tracker is pretty handy microblogging tool, and I've heard that people quite enjoy the updates.Tracker Update
So this is the end of the big adventurous part of the trip, but I'll keep the tracker running. I'll still share updates as and when I have them—general shitposts, weekend trips away, etc.—but they won't be anywhere near as regular. I'll also shift anyone who is subscribed to the email digest onto the monthly schedule. -
I thought we were going to beach to watch the sunset, so I've in flip-flops with a bag full of beers, only to discoverthat we're actually going to an amusement park (where the sunset can be glimpsed, tantalizingly, off in the distance)Luna Park Bait & Switch
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Made it to the beach eventually, and just in time for a displayFireworks from Afar
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La Marseillaise > Most Other National Anthems > God Save the King
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My third fireworks display in a week, and celebrating the French national day the weekend after celebrating the French election results is an excellent combo. I look forward to being one of those insufferable francophile British expats now.Happy Bastille Day!
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Hôtel de région
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Of course, no French office is completed without the legally mandated wine cellar
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Wibble Wobble
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Third time's the charm although, irritatingly, the document that they finally ended up accepting as proof of my residence was a health insurance coverage certificate that I could have accessed at any time (and saved 72EUR had I done so). Win some, lose some.Finally Got My Free Public Transport Pass for Residents
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The new Assembly session started today, which meant the election of a new Assembly President (i.e. Speaker of the House). The 'centrists' and the right-wing united to elect a Macronist instead of the impressively-mustachioed old Communist (finally) proposed by the Left (who received 207 votes to the winner's 220, and obviously was not chuffed).Political Shenanigans
We still don't know who the new Prime Minister will be, but this perhaps bodes poorly — we shall see what happens next. However (though not, I think, directly in response) a union representing dancers, musicians and the like has called a strike on Jul 26, the Olympics opening ceremony.
Looking back a bit, my actual election updates were perhaps a bit confusing and incoherent because, in reality, the election campaign was confusing and incoherent (and that's before even getting into the language barrier). But this summary was quite good at explaining why that was, particularly around the 'centrist' wavering over whether or not to withdraw from third-place races before the second round of voting. In particular, Gabriel Attal (the outgoing Prime Minister) comes out of it looking rather heroic, which I quite like; I don't know much about his policies or political views, but I remember watching him be appointed in early January just as I first arrived in Monty P, so I feel a certain odd kinship with him (although I have won the 'who will hold their new job the longest' competition). Plus, he seems to have done his best (along with some others) to counteract Macron's incredibly stupid attempts to hand the country over to the extreme right.
It's worth highlighting the words of one Macronist who chose to withdraw from her three-way second-round against her leader's instructions:Defeats happen, but you can never recover from dishonour
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Just waiting for the day someone puts their laundry out to dry and wind picks up, raining socks down upon usWe kind of have our own hôtel courtyard here
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Plan:Objective: Windowsill Garden
- Acquire unclaimed plantpots from one of the kitchen windowsills
- Google 'how to grow plants'
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Starting the weekend with a wine-tasting in a fancy castle grounds, listening to some Occitan music. Beats going to Sugarhouse.Friday Night Lights
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In spite of the early morning rail sabotage and torrential downpours, strike threats and other typical Olympics grimness, the opening ceremony was pretty impressive. Went on a bit long but the club bit towards the end and the hot air balloon were definite highlights. Even if (between our dubious Internet connection and rain-soaked camera lenses) it was pretty hard to tell what was happening some of the time:Opening Ceremony
Plus, the far-right are loudly very annoyed with most of it. -
Otherwise how would I know we're in a heatwave? 🥵Thank goodness for the Montpellier emergency alert system
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[Photo credit: Ellie]Cubanos
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I am told that they're basically unkillable: challenge accepted.I have acquired my first spider plant
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We went to the fancy farmers' market for a cheese spree, and ended up with: a goat cheese with a rind that smells of ass but a core that tastes better; the finest Roquefort I've ever tasted; and some Pont-l'Évêque, which I last had nine years ago and love to bits.Cheese platter
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We went to an art exhibition featuring several Mediterranean and Mediterranean-adjacent artists. It was better then the MoMA, but I've definitely spoilt art for myself by already going to the best gallery ever in Havana.Being Mediterranean
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Untitled (Mounir Gouri)
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The figure is actually facing the wall and wearing a horned mask, but I think it looks better as lookong upwards wearing a valkyrie-esque helmet as in this view (just ignore the backwards bum)Me rêveur (Ali Cherri)
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LAYLA MIN OMRI, 1, 2, 3 (Aïcha Snoussi)
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Anguille (Zoë Paul)
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Reminds me of the Procession to Calvary crossed with the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club BandBlaupunkt 20–21 (Mladen Miljanović)
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Most aesthetic beer, hands down
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It's an urgent climatic necessity, although I do feel and looo a bit like I'm wearing a cheesecloth with this shirtTreating myself to a new all-white, all-linen wardrobe
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Yearn ye, gentle traveler, for the ✨eternal pleasure🫦 of four-for-the-price-of-three baguettes?
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Next step in my journey to becoming a Mediterranean: espadrilles
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No rain yet, but the sky's been rumbling consistently for about half an hourBracing for unbearable humidity
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Price: €13Can't Fault the Portion Sizes Here
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Spelunking
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Plant Update: I think I over-watered it and all the leaves started to die
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Plant Update: I drained the excess water and left it in the sun to dry out, but now it's wilting
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I've even learnt how to not burn it when using our gas hobsI've Absolutely Mastered Scrambled Egg
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Emergency Re-Potting Attempt
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I've given the patient a full-body splint. The prognosis isn't promising, but if I'm the Soviet space program then this is my Laika.Plant Update: Hail Mary time
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These stupid €50 notes are too tall to fit in my wallet 😤#JustHighRollerProblems
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Like Pont-l'Évêque, I hadn't had Livarot for ~8 years. The cheesologist behind the counter tried to warn me, but I didn't listen. So I ended up paying through the nose (~8€ for a little disc) for a cheese that stinks enough to get all my flatmates annoyed with me but doesn't have enough of flavour to justify it.Bad Cheese Move
I eventually got fed up with getting stink-clouded every time I opened the fridge, so I just chucked the remainer into the richest cheesy scrambled eggs I've ever had.
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Like a Scalp Jacuzzi
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Thursday is a public holiday, so we spent it romping around the Parc naturel régional des grands caussesPublic Holiday Day Out
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Hermitage
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On the way back we took a detour to Roquefort and went on a tour of their cellars. There was a tasting session at the end and then a gift shop where we bought enough to stink out the fridge for a good couple monthsRoquefort (Cheese)
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Le Tarn #1
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Le Tarn #2
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Absolutely unreasonable house location
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Absolutely unreasonable house location (detail)
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Cliffside Walk
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Cave Vista
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Untitled
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Le Rozier
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But at 20€/bottle and almost certainly tasting awful, we decided against trying themIncredibly French Liquers
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Roquefort (Village)
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I don't fully understand what's in them (I think some kind of sugary offal), but these little guys are my new favorite snack herePates de Pezenas
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I've been looking for monsoon malabar (tasting notes: cedar, pipe tobacco and treacle) for years, ever since my fancy coffee shop in Lancaster stopped stocking it. Imagine my excitement when I walked into the coffee shop here and saw 'malabar', and then googled what 'Moussoné' meant.Coffee
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Near as I can tell, it's some kind of Catholic celebration for a Saint Roch (for whom we have both a church and a train station, as I'm sure he would have wanted). But included in the groups celebrating is a strange group called the Barony de Caravètes. Near as I can tell from the exclusively French-language sources discussing it, because some baron sold his title to the city in the 1200s, now any second-generation Montpellierain·e can claim a baron/baroness title and dress like a muppet.Ran into a Parade Whilst Out Shopping
In many ways, a lot of French traditional stuff is not so far removed from the silliness of British traditional stuff: thanks, Norman yoke 😤 -
La Praluline for Breakfast
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The main Olympics are over, and so is the truce re: the new Prime Minister.French Politics Update
Macron is still refusing to appoint anyone from the New Popular Front, lying that it's because he doesn't want La France Insoumise to have roles in the cabinet. I say lying because Mélénchon called his bluff and offered for LFI to abstain from joining the government if he would stop blocking the appointment of the NFP's Prime Ministerial candidate. Macron didn't budge, because his real agenda isstopping any prospect of a left-wing government committed to a rupture with neoliberalism
. Meanwhile,the old government has officially resigned, but is continuing to govern as though it remains in place.
Mélénchon is now threatening to launch an impeachment process against Macron. From what I can tell this doesn't hold any real chance of going anywhere, but if nothing else it would probably upset Macron—a titanically vain man prone to unironically likening himself to 'Jupiter'—and is therefore still worth doing. And all the while, there's a bunch of legislative work being held up. -
In my lifetime, I have properly studied and used at least seven languages (to very differing degrees). I think that gives me some authority to say that French is far and away the biggest crock of shite I have ever encountered.French Language Update
There is a complete disconnect between the written and spoken forms of the language. It is impossible to derive spelling from speech and (uniquely) difficult to even just divide parts of speech up into separate units. French liaison rules are comprehension cancer, and I finally understand why snooty English people frown on contractions.
Now, on the one hand it's a bit rich for an English-speaker to be complaining about inconsistent spellings—we are the language of 'ghoti' after all—but I think it's important to remember that almost all of the really bullshit parts of English are a) inherited from the French and b) the result of there being no spelling standardisation for hundreds of years, and still today no central body for determining 'correct English'. France has just such a body! And yet rather than doing the sensible thing, (scrapping this trashfire of a language and starting again with Spanish or Haitian creole as a base) they instead spend their days inventing new words for 'email' that only people from Quebec will use.
Also, one result of English's inconsistency is that it is (and its speakers tend to be) mind-blowingly flexible and tolerant of weird mispronounciatons, incorrect word order, etc. French took a worse case of the same problem, and wrapped it up in incredibly inflexible pronounciation system that relies heavily on all the strange 'technically-possible-but-rarely-seen-in-the-wild' sounds from the International Phonetic Alphabet like /ɑ̃/ and /ɛ̃/. If one more idiot shopkeep asks if I really want 100 (cent) of something rather than engaging his tiny skull escargot and realising I probably meant 5 (cinq)…
I've been studying French since primary school, and I've been living here on and off since the start of the year. Despite all this, I would say I am maybe around A2 level on a good day (and maybe B1 for reading if I'm feeling really generous). I can just about hold a simple conversation if the topic is one I have the vocabulary for and the other person speaks slowly and clearly, but I can still barely understand most day-to-day responses and basic things like ordering shops is still a confusing shitshow. Unlike Spanish, where I would routinely wonder how to say something and kick myself because of how obvious it was in hindsight once I found out, I have never once been pleasantly surprised by some turn of phrase or impressed with the efficiency of a French saying. Having to use a 3–5-word hyphenated construction that I still can never remember the order of just to make a sentence into a question is really the examplar of this.
So, if you want to hate yourself and everyone around you, I highly recommend studying French: a language where the more you learn, the less you wish you had. If you want some easymode funtimes, go for Spanish. And if you want a comparatively nice, simple and logical language that's actually rewarding to study, go for Arabic. -
Spent this Saturday at an olive vineyard (I don't know if there is an English word)Hills Panorama
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Hills
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💃💃💃
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Got home from my day of boogying to find some homemade tartare du thon and the best flan I've ever tasted waiting for meHomecoming
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I got my big bag of dried chickpeas and soaked them overnight (I didn't spend a solid year eating rice and beans not to pick up a few tricks). But they were still a little hard and tasted like raw mangetout. It wasn't until after I had already chucked them into my couscous (and had a bit of a munch) that I looked it up online and found out that they're lightly toxic unless you boil them. Oops.Cooking Cockup
At least it wasn't as bad as the time I made fritters with popcorn kernels…
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At Least the Hummus was More Successful
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Uncharacteristically Artistic Arabic Graffiti
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The Fresh Hell That is French
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Excluding abstract constructs like the military–industrial complex, this Macbook is probably the most expensive thing I've ever hated. Other highlights include a screen that attracts smudges like nothing I've ever seen, absolutely no USB-A ports and a slightly electrical tingle every time I touch the classic whilst it's charging because some genius made the whole thing metal and didn't ground it properly.I just love my Quality Mac Product™️
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[Photo credit: Ellie]Teatime
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I've decided I need a hipster with a film camera to follow me around all the time.Le flâneur
[Photo credit: Ellie]
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[Photo credit: Amy]Pizza
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Free tickets and VIP booth upgrades, with all the drinks and blurry out-of-focus finger food you could ever want! [delta-festival.webm]The Benefits of Working in the Events Sector
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This is My Kind of Work Do
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Back in Blighty for a Few Weeks
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Wealden Heaths
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Portsmouth Sunset
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The Puddle Formerly Known as the A421
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A génocidaire, a convicted fraudster (and much worse besides), a Kennedy who isn't even running any more and three different flavours of tankie. #I'mWithDonaldDuckHow's That for a Depressing Set of Options?
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@ Bentley Urban Farm, DoncasterInteresting Garden Décor
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They damn near caused a crush and have delayed us taking off with their insistence on checking cabin bag sizes. I just barely made it, I think partly helped by slipping away quickly amidst the chaos without waiting for approval, as my bag took a bit of squidging to get (mostly) in the slot. If I didn't have my 24-pocket travel coat I wouldn't have stood a chance.Clearly Someone Told the EasyJet Staff to Turn the Asshole Dial Up to 11 Tonight
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Sunshine here I come! (I hope)Taking Off Into Stormclouds
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I landed in Monty P, got back to my flat, went out for a pint and got a French taco to finish. I'm back, babyyyyyy!Reintegrating into French Society
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I thought for sure that if my hold luggage ever looked like it was full of bombs, it'd be when I tried to bring my radio kit and big box of circuitry components over.Surprised These Made it Through Airport Security
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Having just spent the last month not speaking a word of French, I seem to have come back much better at it than when I left. This is just like when I passed my driving test, didn't drive a car for years but read a bunch of ambulance/police driving manuals, and then showed a markéd improvement the next time got behind the wheel. Good job, brain!The Best Way to Study is Not at All
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Paprika–mushroom scrambled egg with boudin catalan; très riche!This Morning's Succulent Breakfast Treat
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The name meansNew Pastry Treat: Kouign-amann
butter cake
in Breton, and that's pretty bob-on
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[Photo credit: Meg]Day 1: 50% Sibling Visit Success Rate
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…because Max managed to get all the way from Birmingham to Heathrow yesterday before realising he didn't have his passportDay 2: A Full Complement of Sibs
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We're working our way through every bakery in a 5mi radius of my flatPastry Platters Every Morning
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In France, Even the Bread is Unionised
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These coloured steps are Instagram-famous, so more often then not the small street at the bottom is crowded with photographers and the stairs are blocked with specimens dancing and the like. Meg was going to be one of them, so we heroically ruined her photo for her own good.Rue du Bras de Fer
[Photo credit: Meg]
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Untitled
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I think it's something to do with breast cancer.Pink Umbrellas
[Photo credit: Meg]
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You may have noticed my photos look less potato-esque lately; I've only gone and got a new phone! (not out of choice)Peyrou in the Sun
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The Michelin-starred restaurant menus were all completely unintelligible, but Umami was comprehensible and delicious (and not too pricey in the grand scheme of things).Fancy Dinner
[Photo credit: Meg]
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[Photo credit: Meg]Fancy Dinner, Pt 2
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Because French is such a horribly flabby language that results in basic things quickly becoming far too lengthy to fit on a roadsign, things end up as cryptic acronyms and read like a deflating whoopie cusion.French Signage
[Photo credit: Amy]
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Although much more on-brand and bizarre was the random group of kids walking around inside trick-or-treatingMy Fave Local Dive Bar Unexpectedly Went All-Out on the Hallowe'en Décor
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Score 1 for us!No Kids Rang Our Doorbell
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Road Trip
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Lunch Stop
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This Olive Looks Like a City from the Air at Night
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We had one of their wines at a wine-tasting event a few months ago and I've been obsessed ever since, but had no luck finding it. So I emailed the vineyard to ask where it's stocked and they said they only sell from their place. Luckily, it was only a 45-min drive away, so we made a day of it and have walked away with several hundred pounds worth of bottles; should tide us over until next seasonWine Tasting at Domaine de Clémentine
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We were in the area so also checked out the village of St Guilhem le Désert, a beautiful little 1,000-year-old town and monastery built into the side of a mountain.An Extra Visit
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Untitled
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Inside the Cloister
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And RIP in advance to his many future victims. And RIP (hopefully) to the Democratic Party: a party so shit that they somehow managed to lose to this lunatic twice!RIP 🇺🇸
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Time for My Foreigner Inspection 🫱🍑🫲
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I've just had my official French welcome visit, 6 months after arriving. I took a language test that's qualified me for 100 hours of free French classes, had a quick run-through of various admin procedures that I've already started (like sorting out a social security number) and was given a form to give to a French doctor to attest that I don't have any contagious diseases.Enfin.
The entire thing was conducted in French with an Arabic translator, which of course makes perfect sense at an all-purpose event for immigrants from all over the world. I'll be back in the UK for the next month which caused some issues with scheduling my language and mandatory civics classes, but I just refused to sign anything until they gave me an English translation (rather than inadvertently commit myself to something whilst I'm away). After a while they found someone bilingual who not only helpfully explained everything, but who also gave me an email address to contact when I get back to arrange the courses (after the initial person told me it wasn't possible to decide later). If I can get all the courses done by the time I have to renew my visa (next April), I can instead bump up to a four-year residence permit; if not, I just get another year-long visa, during which time I'm expecting to becoming European again anyway (c'monnnnn Germany… 🇩🇪🤞), at which point the whole thing will become moot. But I'm not going to turn up my nose at free classes.
Somehow, I scored A1.1 on the reading/writing test and sub-A1 on the speaking/listening. In a similar placement test I took a month or two ago with the Institut Français I got A2.1 and I'm now taking an A2-level online course with them. After a similar amount of time in Central America, I had achieved B1/B2 in Spanish from a start of nada (as opposed to having studied French for many, many pointless years aross both primary and secondary school). Truly, this is an absolutely curséd tongue.
But, despite the dumpster-fire of a language (and the fact that the French administration insists on doing everything by snail mail, and have apparently never encountered a non-French phone number before), life in sunny Monty P is otherwise very good. My job is enjoyable, my flat is fab, my flatmates are sound, I've made some pals already and I've got a long list of associations, places and other activities to check out in the new year. The sense of convivialité here is real: from old men drinking coffees and reading newspapers in the morning to co-workers at the bar for an afterwork drink; from the rich associative life of the city (there are over 1,000 associations in Montpellier alone) to pro-human policies both locally and nationally like free public transport, mandatory workplace training allowances and generous leave; from the beautiful architecture to the wide-ranging public works currently taking place. And the bakeries; oh, the bakeries!
Beach season is over and we're heading into winter, though temperatures are still between 16–22°C and I've seen about 30 cumulative minutes of rain in the last month. Politically, the world is now headed into a much longer, much harsher winter. I've just been thorugh my third bloody election this year in which I have some stake (as a registered voter in the vital battleground state of, um, New Jersey). Between them, this year has presented me with three options for where I might want to live my life: amidst continuing miserable decline in the UK; under incoming fascism in the US; or in France, where an unexpectedly effective left-wing coalition surprised everyone and gave me one of the most uplifting moments of an otherwise grim political year.
In short, it feels like there's still potential for a future here, and the present ain't half bad either. But I think this is as good a time as any to end my tracker, as the boundary between 'I'm going on a trip' and 'this is just where I live now' has blurred to the point of crossover.
So: merci, et à bientôt!
