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Things I didn't know about France several of them slightly mundane

8/9/2017

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These might not be true but as far as I can tell:

They don't have facecloths. They have no facecloths next to the towels but two squares of cloth sewn together on three sides to form a kind of glove.
All the cheap exercise books are graphed not lined
The visibility considered necessary to safely overtake is 1/11th of that considered necessary in New Zealand
There are vast community rubbish bins, compost bins and recycling stations even in tiny villages
There is no hashtag on the keyboards. Or maybe that is just this keyboard. Maybe it is a keyboard from those dark years before hashtags were reinvented as the primary key of importance on the keyboard where you learnt to say everything important with a hashtag.

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Tignes, Friday, Sept 2

2/9/2017

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We went up to Tignes today, which is 2400 meters above sea level. We caught a gondola type ski lift this time which took us up to 2700 meters. All around us mountains which were 2000 meters above that. It had rained in the morning and the clouds were still there and we didn't see all the peaks. We saw marmots! We took lots of photos of marmots in the mountain rocks. Marmots look just like mountain rocks. You can't see the marmots in the photos of marmots we took, you can only see rocks. Later we went to a swimming pool in the village. It had excellent views and a tog spinner to dry your togs.

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My death of Lady Di poem

1/9/2017

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The best shirt
(from Tree Space, Victoria University Press, 2014)

The best shirt I ever owned was polyester,
green and cream stripes, with a wide
collar. Green trees on the cream stripes,
cream trees on the green. The best shirt
I ever owned I found in a one-day basement
market in Brixton, the clothes piled on
trestle tables like food. It was a whole
pound and I thought about it for quite
a few minutes holding it to the light
that streamed down onto us,
holding the cuffs to my wrists, fearful
of extravagance, until some interesting
young man said, that’s a good shirt,
I’ll buy it if you don’t, and I realised then
that I would wrestle to the ground
anyone who tried to claim the best shirt
I’d ever own. I see from photos I wore it
with Cath and Bec and everyone
the night before Lady Di died, the night
Fi and I decided to go to Switzerland,
but later changed our minds
and went to Italy. I wore it there too,
in the piazza of Siena with a green
crocheted beret and imagined the
applause of horses. I’m the kind of person
who has to think my way to emotions
and figures out later the joy of all the right
things arriving at the right time.
Because I’m always losing and finding
things, I never grieve about them,
never dream it is the last loss, like I
never think this is the last time
it will mean something and all
the next times will be full only
of yearning. I don’t know the
last time I wore the shirt. Perhaps
I forgot and gave it away. I know
how the fabric stretched across
my chest and one of the cuffs
had lost a button and I was in the
city but something of rotting logs
and small brilliant fungi hung about.

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Things I didn't know about France several of them slightly mundane

Tignes, Friday, Sept 2

My death of ﻿Lady Di poem

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My death of Lady Di poem