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In France, the sign un train peut en cacher un autre is the equivalent of the English “Another train coming if lights continue to show.” In other words, don’t get impatient if the barriers at the level crossing don’t go up straight away. I’ve used the phrase in the past to demonstrate that French can be really elegant and compact, although of course, anyone who’s ever tried to write a business letter in French will also know there are moments when it can be monumentally long-winded. Je vous prie d’agreer Monsieur, l’expression de mes sentiments les plus distingués is the French for Your sincerely. Or at least it used to be the last time I actually learned any French.
Anyway, un train peut en cacher un autre means literally One train can conceal another. What I’m aiming for in the title is one task can bring on the next, although I may also be misremembering une tache for a task.
You see, earlier this afternoon, I wanted to get the cool WordPress plugin that automatically reposts today’s twitter messages in a new post without any need for my input. So I downloaded and installed Alex King’s Twitter tools. And it promptly broke my blog completely, so I uninstalled it again, and left to go to committee.
Hours later, after a brief interlude back home, then a further trip into town for a group meeting and a briefing from the chief exec of our ALMO (the town hall has been lousy with Labour councillors turning up en masse for a contested election for council leader and deputy leader, and I have not yet heard the outcome… I’ve been a councillor for five years, and we’ve only had one leader and deputy in all that time so if it happens, a change will be interesting) I tried to find out why the plugin didn’t work, and found it was because my installation of WordPress had been superseded dozens of times since I last upgraded.
So, I downloaded the new version (it’s free, after all) and went through the necessary steps to upgrade.
Now here’s where the extra tasks come in. The new version has knackered my old template a bit, with all the links on the side now appearing multiple times. So I’ll have to rewrite the template, or find a sexy new one – which is another task which could be quite time consuming.
And the new version of WordPress helpfully points out which of your other plugins are not au courant. Apparently, it’s nearly all of the ones I use. So I will have to download and replace each of those one by one, which will take a while.
Not tonight, however, I’m supposed to be typesetting a leaflet.
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Former UK MP Jane Griffiths got to vote for the first time in France in the elections last weekend.
It’s apparently not a case of taking a stubby bit of pencil into a polling booth there.
Mind you, it’s not that I’ve done that myself in the UK for years, since I’ve almost always had a postal vote, as a person who’s normally a little on the busy side on polling day.
I’m at Lib Dem conference all week in the lovely shiny new Liverpool Arena. I’m blogging like crazy over on LibDemVoice.org, and plucking up the courage to use my new podcasting thingy.
I always forget just how lovely Liverpool is. I’ve been here two or three times before, on a ringing tour in the 90s, visiting friends in Crosby, and probably one other time. P’s sister used to work here as a junior writer on Brookside (apparently one of the few streets in Liverpool not to get FOCUS leaflets).
And yet I never remember it’s a great place. I really must come back as a tourist some time and spend some proper time in the city – hopefully at a time when the city is NOT ram-packed with a conference and a home match, and the hotels are rubbing their hands in glee and charging top whack.
It’s not just me – even my alma mater is getting into lighter-than-air flight:
Iain Dale is trying to find conspiracy theories behind the fact that the Lib Dem walk out of Parliament earlier this week didn’t make it onto the front page of the party newspaper, Lib Dem News.
Strangely, there is no mention of Ed Davey’s hissy fit or the LibDem walkout. Do you think they have now realised how ridiculous they made themselves look?
I suspect the answer is rather more prosaic. The print deadline for Lib Dem News is Tuesday so that the printers can get the publication off the presses, folded, into envelopes and onto the doormats of Lib Dem activists and Iain Dale by Friday. The walkout probably happened too late in the cycle to make it into this week’s paper. We’ll know by waiting to see what’s in next week’s edition. However, it might be such old news by then that it doesn’t feature much.
These are the perils of a weekly periodical. Perhaps he’ll understand better when his own political rag reaches the presses.
I’ve started a new obsession – hot air ballooning.
I think it started at New Year. I bought some thai hot air lanterns, called Kong Ming which we let off at midnight as an alternative to fireworks. I thought they were pretty cool. Tracing paper envelopes, about half my height, with a light wire circle at the bottom, and a fuel slab that looked a little like a tealight.
You light the fuel with a match or lighter until it holds. You hold the envelope up at arms length, and clear of the flame until the fuel cell has created enough hot air to fill the balloon and then eventually the balloon holds up by itself, and then finally tugs away at your hands. Then you let go, and the whole thing rises gracefully up above the roof line and gently floats away.
I let off the first balloon myself with everyone else watching from inside the conservatory, and it evidently looked so much fun that everyone else put on a coat and came out to let off the remaining ones.
And since then, hot air balloons have been floating around my consciousness, including some dreams and day dreams. At some point, one day, it would be good to go up in a balloon – and there’s even a company that sets off from Wollaton Park when the weather is right.
Till then, I’m reading the magazine of the BBAC and seeing if I can get to any hot air balloon festivals.
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