One of a kind

One of those days when the blue of sea and sky just seem more blue...
One of those sights that make you hold your breath each time again:









Un de ces jours où le bleu du ciel et de la mer semble encore plus bleu...
Une de ces vues qui vous font retenir votre souffle à chaque fois de nouveau...

On and on

On and on, the sun comes up and goes down again... It's just our way of appreciating it or looking upon it that changes.









Encore et encore, le soleil se lève et se couche. Ce n'est que notre façon de l'apprécier ou de le voir qui change.

Bilingue - Going bilingual

J'ai reçu, hier, une certaine plainte concernant le "mais-c'est-tout-en-anglais-et-je-ne-lis-pas-l'anglais" de mon blog... Donc allez hop, nous voici désormais en représentation bilingue. Ceci sera perçu, je l'espère, comme une grande faveur et j'espère encore plus, du coup, qu'elle ne sera pas prise à la légère et que, dans mon élan de générosité linguistique (je rigole, mais il faut dire que ça prend deux fois plus de temps du coup), je serai récompensée par un nouveau lecteur fidèle.

J'en profite également pour faire un méa culpa concernant mon absence des derniers temps. Mémoire et études obligent, je n'ai toujours pas réussi à mettre en route de machine à fabriquer le temps et suis donc obligée de choisir entre mes différents loisirs et d'en défavoriser quelques-uns. J'espère pouvoir remédier à cela d'ici peu.

Vu que la saison change une fois de plus - comme elles font immanquablement toute l'année - quelques fleurs pour célébrer l'été me semblaient de rigueur.












I received a certain complaint, yesterday, about my blog ("but-it's-all-in-English-and-I-don't-read-English...")... So, here it is, please welcome us in a bilingual fashion. I hope that this will be acknowlegded as a favor and I hope even more so that, in a response to my linguistic generosity (joking, but it does take twice more time now), I will be rewarded with a fervent new reader.

I'd also like to apologise for my absence for the past few months. Studies and end papers coming first and since I have not yet been able to put into work a time machine, I have to choose between my various hobbies et put some temporarily out of the way "for the greater good". I hope this will change soon.
Since seasons are changing once more - as they invariably do allyear long - I thought some flowers would be appropriate.

Sarah, Farmwife, Lea (and sorry for those I forget), I hope you are all well and that we'll be able to catch up soon.

Good journey...

This is the wonderful sunset that welcomed me home to Perpignan when I came back from Belgium, end May.
Train trips really do something to me (cf. post "Trains make me nostalgic")
Yet I don't recommend the Perpignan-Brussels train trip - except to really nasty people then... Especially on a long weekend AND when your train stops at EuroDisney - all those mini-Mickeys getting up on the train, aargh.

Well, to make a long story short, the train trip itself was really really tiresome but that all melted away like snow from the sun when I laid eyes upon this sight.
It was a really warm "welcome home".

Gone too soon.

No words needed. Just two maybe: "Goodbye..." and "Thank you"
Fly for me, Bird of the Sun, fly high.

Trains make me nostalgic...

Trains make me nostalgic.
I've gone on a weekend trip to Toulouse : approximately 200 km away and three hours and a half of train trip because the train stops at about every possible station along the railroad.
And trains always have the same effect on me : they make me nostalgic.
I feel as if they're always chasing time in an always-failing effort to catch up on it. And we embark upon them to make a journey through the past, in the present or towards the future.
The feeling itself is hard to explain but I love trains.
I love sitting back and watching the view, especially when leaving from Perpignan up north because you invariably cross Leucate and its "étang".
When on a train, I become submerged by memories. Not mine because they are memories that I can't have for I haven't grown up here, but memories of time.
As the train speeds past castles with weird, old towers and fresh new swimming pools built in their gardens, I think of ancient times. How difficult it must have been to travel by horse, carriage or by foot. How long those kilometers - blurred under my feet by the speed - must have been or seemed to the travelers.
Attending a sick relative living hundred kilometers away was like a trip to the North Pole - and undertaken with about the same enthusiasm I suppose...
But today, we complain if we never leave on a weekend trip, fly up to 1400 km just to wish and celebrate a Happy Birthday and get oh-so-angry at a half-hour delay.
It seems to me we have evolved into mighty-spoiled brats, haven't we?

Narbonne station - twenty minutes stop. People complaining - again - that "it takes so long to get from A to B" and "trains ... always late... it's the government's fault..." or "why does it get to a stop so far from the entrance we came in?"
Spoiled, selfish little creatures? ...
I throw my eyes to heaven and imagine them four hundred years ago, in a skin coat, ploughing through a meter fifty of snow to hunt on a hare they'd never catch...
We are completely unaware of the easiness of our century. Certainly, there are troubles, there are dramas and catastrophes but they have always existed. Humans were just unaware of most of them before technology.

The train starts moving again. Backwards. I spot a large, a huge building that recalls a memory - truly mine this time - : I was twelve or so, and we had come from Belgium on a holiday here. We were riding past Narbonne when I saw a large building. I thought it was a university or so. It was a football or rugby stadium. And from the top of my voice, the twelve-year old that I was declared solemnly: "when I grow up, I'll teach English Literature here!"
"Fat chance" my mother may have thought. So would I if I had been conscious of my words.
But Destiny is a strange creature : it gets nasty and growls when you try to pet it but comes laying on your lap, purring, when you're not expecting it.
Here I am, more than ten years later and I have almost - almost - fulfilled that little twelve-year-old 's sentence. Almost. Will it come true?
Only time will tell.

Old and new alike...

Old and new macros alike...

Coypu and seagulls

We finally had three rays of sun yesterday so I went for a walk by the river that flows through Perpignan. Yes, yes, these pictures have been taken on the banks of a river that flows through a town!! It always makes me so happy to see that there is still wildlife life inside cities.

Digging

Since it has been quite cold and cloudy here for the past few days, I haven't gone out with my camera much so I've decided to dig up a series of Summer pictures.
Here's the Languedoc-Roussillon region in June!

Peek-a-Boo!!

Sights in Roma