La belle dame sans ami

As someone who models herself on the booze-demanding, tweed-jacket sporting, saveloy-hurling Withnail, it came as no real shock to find myself tramping through the moors of Yorkshire having gone on holiday 'by mistake.' Huddled in a converted chapel with only underfloor heating, radiators, clothes, whisky and wine to keep us warm, it was touch and go for the McKenzie Smiths, and tensions were running high as round 3 of the family Mastermind tournament commenced.

                                       

     

                                             I'm in a park and I'm practically dead.

It wasn't all quizzes and Chateau d'Yquem though (the latter I can confirm made absolutely no appearance over the course of the week). A trip, nay, a pilgrimage was made to James Herriott world - former home of  the holder of the hotly contended title of 'most famous fictional British vet.' It was one of those brilliantly British attractions where the volunteeers still seem vaguely stunned when you hand over the money and express even the vaugest interest in their delightfully antiquated offerings. I would genuinely recommend it to anyone, even those who have merely a passing interest in exploring bovine rectal cavities. It was manned by enthusiastic staff who genuinely loved their work and wanted everyone else to, too. A rarity in this day and age (oh god, Yorkshire's rubbed off on me...)

                                      

                                          Drew getting 'stuck in' (a compromising position)

Various excursions were undertaken to breweries, ruined abbeys and country pubs which were scrutinised and scored accordingly on vital categories such as 'number of pub animals,' 'variety of gins availble' and 'number of times the infamous Yorkshire spade was referred to in appropriate manner' (a spade.) After extensive research, The Royal Oak at Dacre was awarded the coveted and profitable patronage of the McKenzie Smiths, with its record breaking 2 cats, 13 gins and at least two references to 'that there London.' 

      

                                                                 T' Royal Oak

After a few days, the moors began to loom more murderously than majestically, so we shoe-horned ourselves into the car, fighting for space with my mother's 'utensil kit' which seemed to be comprised entirely of sunscreen and barbeque tongs. They remained unused. With the wind not in our hair and the rain lashing insistently at the windows, we followed our hearts and ended up in...Leeds. 

       

                                                           Please all go to Leeds.

Leeds was a city I knew little about other than the fact it was host to 'underground' raves which seemed to populated entirely by public school kids wearing ironic scrunchies and the most hideous, flammable Addidas jackets they could pay a tramp for. Oh. How very wrong I was. Well, public school kids do still insist on dressing like homeless Eastern Europeans in the 80s, but Leeds is BRILLIANT. It's cosmopolitan in the true sense of the word, rather than a town centre with two Wetherspoons and a Tesco with an 'International' food section. Everyone we met was unfailingly helpful and sweet, and the staff were so attractive that Drew had to be quite forcibly manhandled out of the food court away from his new 'girlfriend' (who was mercifully unaware of her new stalker.) Two cocktails and a glass of wine can lend anything a rather Heston-esque rose-tinted glaze, but I still maintain that Leeds has become my favourite English city. (Oxford doesn't count, London is terrible and Liverpool's eyebrows scare me.)

                                     

Cressida  rocking the "I'm going out with a prince but look how edgy my dungarees are, yah?" look.

It wasn't quite Ibiza, thank God, and it involved all key components of successful holidays - rain, reading and refilling glasses. Well done, team. I also, unlike most people my age, would infinitely rather go on holiday with my family than...well, almost anyone else. I considered this matter after looking through my photos from the Summer and realising that 90% of them are taken either at home, galavanting with my sororal counterpart or on walks with the faithful but excrement enthusiast hounds. It's an odd one - this Summer perhaps more than ever, my Facebook feed has been stampeded by elephant riding in Thailand, inundated by snorkelling in The Maldives and crushed under the iron might of impressive internships. 

        

I think it was the first time in my life that I really began to question what I was really 'doing.' I certainly wasn't under any illusions that I would enjoy not washing, growing dreadlocks and getting a tribal tattoo, nor would I exactly be a shoe-in for an internship at YouTube (the one video I ever uploaded got 45 views and about as many 'thumbs down.' That's stand up for you.) However, something left me feeling vaguely....deflated. I have been having a wonderful Summer, with a truly enjoyable and unrealistically flexible internship, but seeing pictures of parties I should've attended, job opportunities I should've explored and people I should've made time for made me realise how insular I've allowed myself to become.

      

No man is an island, and I think I've finally realised that whilst lounging around at home, taking family matches of University Challenge disconcertingly seriously and teaching my dogs to sing is good, wholesome fun, it isn't what these interminable Oxford vacs were made for. So, I issue this as an apology - firstly, for straying so far from my usual blog fodder (it won't happen again) and secondly, for basically being a bit of a self-indulgent, self-important lonesome lemon who considered my company to be so worthwhile that people ought to seek me out, and not the other way around. I apologise for being a pretty apalling friend to many people who I've lost to the 'real' world now and for not trying harder to either see people, or make up more convincing excuses not to.

We'll speak no more of it, and this term I promise to try and be a bit more Withnail, and a bit less 'I.'

Inter(n) the jaws of death, inter(n) the mouth of Hell...

Firstly, I would like to apologise to all of you for waiting so patiently and with what I can only assume is baited breath. I have been immensely busy these past few days – I've barely had time to watch even one episode of Ab Fab to brush up on my Patsy Stone-isms– and have also been jet setting around....the UK.

What. A. Woman.

I wish I could report great developments in either my pedagogic advancement or my general attitude towards “the young,” however this is (perhaps predictably) not the case. It seems that the closer I get to the tantalising (in the purest origins of the word) finishing line, the less sympathy I have for the largely offensive petits mômes that I “teach.” 5 weeks, I keep telling myself, 5 bloody weeks. It's the kind of time that usually flies by, but when each week is met with a new tirade of “constructive” criticism, gallic shrugs and convenient amnesia when it comes to the fact that I am in fact NOT A TEACHER, it can be tricky to embrace life as would a spring lamb. Which I haven't even had a chance to see yet. Any pictures welcome.

Categorically cute. Categorically not how I feel.

As my enthusiasm dwindles, so too does my bank account. In a rather French façon, I have not been paid for 2 months, which means I am currently working as the most reluctant volunteer since...actually, I can only think of immensely tasteless slave labour jokes, for which this is neither the time nor the place. If indeed there is one. Questionable humour aside – it's getting drastic. I've had to resort to boxed wine. I'm rationing my baguette intake, and I had to actually TURN AWAY Jean Le Fromage the local door-to-door cheese merchant yesterday. It was difficult for both of us, and I expect a headless wheel of brie to appear in my bed any day now. Which wouldn't be entirely unpleasant.

Things just aren't going my WHEY.

However, it's not all impending poverty and disdain for “our future,” (a phrase which becomes more terrifying every time I am forced to confiscate yet another packet of cigarettes from an 11 year old wearing a “I fuck on the first date,” t-shirt,) for the weather has been glorious. The kind of sunshine that makes you want to smile at passers by and, if you are as shamelessly pretentious as I am, cycle around with baguettes in a basket wearing a stripy top and whistling The Marseillaise. I've sufficiently topped up my Vitamin D levels for my imminent return to Scotland – by which I mean I've scorched my shoulders, nose and forehead to a crisp. Mad dogs and Scotsmen, more like.

I know a madder dog, but he was as usual hiding under a table.

I get a small amount of comfort from the fact that everybody around me appears to be preparing for exams. All of my Terminal students are desperately panicking and suddenly realising that working in their uncle's kebab van isn't actually what they want to do for the rest of their life (not a stereotype before anybody gets all Overheard at Oxford on me - this is an actual conversation I have had with about 4 of my pupils...). Whilst it is good that they have (mostly) all decided to actually do some work, it is sadly mainly a case of "too little, too late." These kids are meant to be able to discuss water shortages, the problems of social media and (fairly) fluently give a critical view of current affair topics. I had a pupil yesterday ask me how to spell "evening." I am doing my best, but cramming roughly 12 years of English lessons into a half hour slot is no mean feat...

I'm going grey and everything...

I've got slightly bored of reminding them how important their exams are, and with some of the students I have taken the highly professional option of just giving them old copies of Heat and asking them what they think of "Preencess Kate," in lieu of pointless grammar drills. Stable horse, door. Conversations usually turn to summer plans, and while they (in a kind of touchingly ambitious way) dream of American road trips and trips to Dubai (which they are ALL bizarrely obsessed with) I, with a heavy heart, consider what the hell I am going to do.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA. No.

I am going to try and temper this rant slightly, because several of my readers have had the pleasure of already hearing it from me. I HATE the internship system. It is truly, truly unfair. Firstly - the types of internships offered. I have absolutely ZERO desire to pursue a career in anything that I cannot explain to someone aka "consultancy." Consulting who?! About what?! Finance similarly. I still, after 6 months, get a bit stressed about the conversion rate. I'm lucky in that I have a vague idea about what I would ideally like to do - something involving writing or journalism, however the only internships that even vaguely relate to that are all for Bloomberg or Reuters, and they specify having good, working knowledge of the markets and stocks. I didn;t rule this out straight away. I perused many a site "for dummies," and left none the wiser. There is only so far blagging can get you. So what does that leave? Thousands upon thousands of unpaid, un-regulated internships in central London without even the promise of travel expenses. Oh - I'm sorry. One advertising company offered "free organic snacks," but a girl cannot live on kale chips alone. Nor would I ever want to.

Utopia. Or so the property prices would have you believe.

So - a quick please (because what are blogs for?) In return for the light entertainment I bestow on you all, if anyone has any ideas for an "up and coming, self-starting, punctual, thinking-outside-the-boxer, happy-go-lucky team player, then absolutely do not let me know. If, on the other hand, you know anyone/anywhere looking for a sarcastic (but hardworking and reliable) committed misanthrope with a way with puns and who makes a cracking Starbucks run, then really, really do tell me. Anything. As long as it doesn't involve teaching. I, as opposed to any of my students, have learned my lesson.


I eagerly await your call, an email will do nicely.

X

We Need to (S)talk About Kévin

Après nous, le déluge, amirite? Having spent far too long in bed this week, I have taken my time trawling through various pictures of flood porn. Everyone loves a man in wellies, after all. Stricken though my soul has been by the various images of floating firemen and bobbing bobbies, I've had my own flood to worry about.

Phwoaarrr.

In a situation that can only be described as biblical, my sitting room ceiling has started to cave in. What started out as a slow bloom of water, akin to the pleasant swirl of milk in freshly brewed tea, has now become something far more sinister. There is hubbling, bubbling and we are verging dangerously close to toil and troubling.

Me just doing some underwater ballet in my pristine flat.

In order to avert a small catastrophe and the destruction of Jean-Paul the Plant, I took matters in to my own hands and went to -and I apologise to any Brits reading this – talk to the neighbours. I took the lift as angrily is as possible to do so, and rapped firmly on the door whilst simultaneously checking up on vocab for “crevice.” (Which is, as all Blackadder fans know, a positively disgusting word.)

Baaaah.

Therefore imagine my surprise when, instead of the balding, mildly overweight gentlemen I was expecting, a startlingly handsome youth answered the door. He introduced himself as Kevin (well, you can't have everything), the son of the owner of the whole building aka pretty much a property tycoon. I instantly forgot my meticulously prepared tirade and just flapped around a bit and said the word “moist” about 4 times and generally made an arse of myself.

Fortunately he seemed to pity this mad eengleesh, and gave me a slightly wary smile and some scary looking insurance information which I then proceeded to drop on the way back to the lift. And people that that the bumbling Hugh Grant English thing is all an urban myth... So the long and short of it is that I have some confusing looking legal documents to translate, an ever growing pile of wet plaster on the floor, and a lingering sense of embarrassment.

My generally cretinous behaviour aside, I've had a brilliant couple of weeks. I swanned, as is my wont, off to Paris for a weekend avec ma soeur, and we had a cracking time painting the town rouge. We made the almost instantly regrettable decision of walking up the Eiffel Tower, drank a lot of wine, consumed a few dozen baguettes and generally behaved like young Parisians who are, in the infamous words of a Mr. A. Ant, so French.

Metallic jeggings - ahead of his time.

It is always tricky coming back to anywhere after a weekend in Paris, but Lyon did a very good job of making me happy to be home. Adore Paris as I do, it always takes a weekend there to make me realise that I would rather chew off my own earlobe than actually have to live there. The metro alone is an ordeal worthy of Dante's undivided attention.

Room for a small one?

So work is still work, France is still France. It is gloriously sunny, I'm sitting on my balcony drinking wine and smiling away to myself because today it just feels like everything is right with the world. I hope all of you, wonderful readers, are equally as happy but maybe not as tipsy. You've all got work to be getting on with.

Une Lyonnaise sur son balcon,

xxx

Baguette Me Not

Monsieurdames,

Due to somewhat aggressively popular demand, I'm back. 

I returned triumphantly in true McKenzie Smith style (a week later than I was supposed to.) Those who went to school with me will remember my consideration of term dates as merely a suggestion. I touched down in Lyon at some ungodly hour on the 11th and proceeded to have a minor meltdown. I hated France, I hated Lyon, I hated my phone, my luggage, everything. (As one tends to at 5 o clock in the morning.) I, as you could probably glean from that, was none too pleased to be continuing with my Year Abroad. After a brilliant Christmas and New Year, it is always hard to come back down to earth, especially from 37,000 feet in a disconcertingly rickety EasyJet number.

However, after a few cheery "Bonjour, Madame"s and several baguettes, I was feeling slightly chirpier. By the first bottle of wine I was positively dancing with joy. (Funny that.) I took myself off to The Wallace, not being quite ready to sever all Scottish ties just yet, and sat down to write a list of all the things I love so much about being here. Warm, fresh baguettes (I had forgotten just how much better French ones actually are; a rare example of the French not merely thinking they're superior) tea on my balcony, watching the sun set over the Alps, exploring a new area of the city each weekend, coming across dogs in the changing rooms of Zara etc. I won't bore you all with the whole list until at least the last blog entry. 

I mean, just look at it.

So feeling my Frenchness fully restored, I adjusted my beret and sashayed back into la vie Lyonnaise. I've taken myself in hand and commanded myself to take full advantage of my last few months here. I've tried new restaurants, nibbled (and regretted said nibbling) some steak tartare, made various forays into yet unsampled wines and finally done the travelling I kept promising to do. Taken the taureau by the cornes, if you will. 

I hopped on a train at Perrache (sadly sans dream or indeed cardigan) and made my way to Avignon. I'd chosen it as my weekend destination for two main reasons. 1) I had vague recollections of visiting there as a 12 year old on a school trip, but there are few things that take the impact out of a beautiful, historic city like seeing it in a 2 hour, heavily supervised burst and 2) I found a devastatingly cheap deal. I arrived in the most glorious sunshine and sat around drinking wine in a square and chatting to my new Labrador companion at the adjoining table. He was called Alfonse. 

I can neither confirm nor deny that he was wearing a beret.

I bid adieu to my canine companion and checked in to my hotel. Some people might think it is strange, but travelling alone is one of my all time favourite things to do. Want to consume the entire contents of the minibar for lunch? No problem. Want to spend 6 hours in the bath singing along to The Jam? Go for it. Travelling alone gives the most amazing sense of freedom. I did exactly as I pleased for the entire weekend which is, fundamentally, how I would quite happily spend my whole life. #hedonistatheart. If you haven't been to Avignon, I cannot urge you strongly enough to do so. It is small enough to see in a weekend and is arguably one of the most beautiful places I've visited. The Palais des Papes is genuinely breathtaking and of course, there is the infamous Pont on which it is rumoured, on y danse.

Alfonse and I's square of choice.

My wonderful weekend was only slightly marred by one utterly inexplicable situation (just the one, my luck must be improving). I was wondering around the deserted Palais des Papes and was climbing a spiral staircase into a large antechamber. A lone male stood in said (still cavernou)s antechamber with his back to me. He then proceeded to belch in the most revolting manner imaginable, and, of course, it echoed. Oh god, did it echo. I tried as hard as possible to avoid laughing and very nearly succeeded. Perhaps I should've been blunter with my mixture of disgust and amusement however, as the author of this bilious masterpiece walked up to me and asked me out for dinner. WHAT THE HELL? I have just heard you burp in a Papal Palace, watched you appreciate its echo and you think that is some sort of aphrodisiac? As soon as I think I understand the French, something like this happens.

The scene of the crime

Belching Frenchmen aside, it was a magical trip and it was with a heavy heart that I left beautiful Provence to prepare for my 8am lesson the following day. Yes, being what some may and indeed have called a majestic multi-tasker, I manage to squeeze in a bit of teaching in between my swanning and/or quaffing. This has been slightly less eventful than before Christmas. As far as the students are concerned anyway. They have been verging dangerously close to delightful, more of which later.

The teachers, however, are a slightly different story. Most have been as amazingly kind, welcoming and helpful as ever. In fact, I am going for a drink with one later this evening to meet her family . However, there are some who, since discovering that I won't be staying for an optional extra month, have decided to make their feelings known. Despite my bravado, I do actually work really, really hard. I spend hours if not days on each lesson I plan, have given extra lessons on my days off and have also organised for my students to participate in a Europe wide model UN event here in Lyon.

Hotel de Region. It has indoor trees - a true mark of swanky buildings.

However, it would seem that this extra work is not enough. I have "not been around much," aka I don't feel compelled to spend my spare time in the staff room making painful small talk with teachers whose names I don't know and who don't have a clue why I'm here. "I'm not planning my lessons carefully enough" because, silly me, I assumed it would be ok for me to borrow some speakers from the teacher. It was not. "I'm not reliable," because...I don't even know where this one came from. I haven't missed a lesson yet and in fact this teacher has missed two lessons with me. Did I say any of this? No, of course not. I'm British.

I just smiled politely and remarked that I "had been busy recently" and would make an effort to spend more time drinking tepid tea on threadbare chairs and indulge in threadbare chat. Fortunately, my students do not think the same. I write this from the Hotel de Region, surrounded by over 300 students from 6 different countries, some of my pupils amongst them. Not one of them has ever been to this building before, nor even this side of the train station. Some of them used to be so shy about speaking English that they wouldn't even talk to me, yet now here they are speaking English in front of hundreds of people in a totally new environment, writing lengthy and articulate articles for the local press and even interviewing the director of the entire Rhone-Alpes Region. YOU GO TEAM DOISNEAU. We showed those (alarmingly well-dressed and glamorous) international school students!

PROUD.

On that cheerful note, I shall bid you all farewell. If anyone has any mediating they need doing in the meantime, I know just the kids.

I yield the floor.

xx