Pasqua in Paris

Logging off and leaving the office. Will be spending the long weekend getting our glad on in gay'ol pari'. Will be a time of focused tourism, croissant connoisseurism, cultural gluttony and 'Je ne comprends pas' Français.

Easter in springtime seems to make so much more sense; the blossom is gorgeous, daylight now stretches well beyond office hours and, as far as the eye can see, the cityscape of roofs is being overshadowed by the resurrection of the urban forest, as the winter-barren trees, led by the weeping willow, slowly starts to turn green.

After our weekend across the channel, we return, not to work, but to a van trip to the south coast of Britain. Four nights getting back to it. Yeah. Bring on the seaside. Bring on summer. Bring on the speedo’s!

A panacea for your thoughts

The incessant beeping of the backing van, coupled with the omnipotent gnashing, grinding, gnawing of the grader next door, is slowly, surely, etching away at my sanity. Oh for long, quiet, dark nights of peaceful sleeps; sans sirens, sans street-lights, sans city. My small-town heart longs for deepest green forests and widest blue oceans, and my intuitive soul, so long subordinate to my logical mind, longs for satisfaction greater than a paycheque of weekends in Paris. As I run, row and cross-train my way to nowhere, endless miles to a smaller pair of jeans, I am struck by how circular and shallow this existence is. I am working for a communications company, writing papers for a huge, multinational pharmaceutical corporation, yes, the one that, amongst other atrocities, created the gas that was sold to the Nazis that was used in chambers that killed the innocent that, lest we forget, we forgot. Yes, heads-rolled, debts were paid, they say, that was then, this is now; why now things are different, now they sell us drugs we may not need, but are made to feel like we do need, because they need us to fund the shareholders charity ball in Florida. In this back-stabbed world of deadlines and targets, efficacy and safety, KOLs and expert opinion, I find myself asking, where is the love?