Hair, Flair and the Fallout From Blair

So it's been nearly a week, and things are hotting up...ish.

Firstly, I've just returned from having the speediest haircut of my entire life. It was just a case of my explaining to the lady what I wanted before she set off at Mach 1 to remove as much hair from the top of my head as she possibly could, without appearing to care a great deal about the actual consistency of length etc. It reminded me of the people who work at the checkout in French supermarkets - rapidity is the order of the day, where they veritably fling each product through the scanner, testing both my reflexes and bagging abilities simultaneously. My theory about this aberrant behaviour is that the pace of life is sometimes so slow in Western Europe that they feel forced to make up for it in other aspects of life, giving everyone more time to wander slowly down the streets and embrace every other person they meet, "inconnu" or otherwise.

Last Friday, while attending a soirée at the house of one of the other assistants here, some French friends of theirs rocked up with a guitar and an accordian. It was the sort of situation you'd imagine an Englishman creating in an attempt to lampoon French culture, but THIS WAS FOR REAL. Needless to say, it was pretty exciting. Never have the words "Can I play on your accordian" had more connotations...

So there are protests again, this time involving smashing vans. Great. The more damage that's done as part of the democratic right to protest, the more public sympathy for the upcoming plight of students is going to dwindle - it's really not difficult to fathom. So here's my take: if you want to protest, go ahead and do so peacefully; I will support you to the hilt. If you want to act like thugs, please have the decency to kindly fuck off and not do it as part of a reasonable demonstration, thus ruining the reputations of those who actually care about the politics of the matter. Preferably this controlled thuggery can be contained within certain areas, perhaps like Fight Club without the schizophrenia. Or with - either's fine with me.

Predicting an Ashes fightback,

Charlie x