Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Robyn and Maff Heffy!

Congratulations to Robyn and Maff who tied the knot last weekend!

The ceremony (or rather the blessing) took place at Jimmy's pig farm near Ipswich and it was an absolutely perfect day. Robyn looked great, Maff looked great and the pig was delicious!



Click here for the rest of the photos.

Monday, June 04, 2007

A week in Provence

Sophie, Dave, Laure and I enjoyed a lovely week down in Avignon visiting the surroundings and playing the train game (Sophie won). Lots of photos were taken of course...
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/ianbeks/AWeekInProvence

Adrian Leeds Appreciation Society!

Hey, when abbreviated, that makes ALAS ! And I think you'll agree with me when I say, what "a lass" she is... not!
So why do we (Deepa and I, that is - we're in this together!) appreciate her? Well, not only does she try to help anglophones in France, but she makes a tidy profit from it too, I'm sure. To those of you not already acquanited, she's writes practically useless articles about living in Paris; rather than "what to do", "where to go", "where to eat/drink" and so on, she drivels on about her own personal experiences. I don't know how or why (in fact I can't remember) I started receiving regular newsletters from www.parlerparis.com but they'd stopped for a long while until just recently. Ah, fond memories of some good chuckling came flooding back. Especially one particular memory where I actually wrote back to her, commenting on one of her articles (http://www.parlerparis.com/issues/pparis26-1-04.html). In fact, I went to the bother of digging up the email from my archives...
Hi Adrian,
I just read your article. Your level of tolerance is incredible. I wonder if it's blinded by your love of Paris. Your sense of humour however is unfathomable. Nothing about the events on Saturday appealed to me or made me "burst out in fits of laughter". Quite the opposite. We did however come across a "madame" squeezing past in the opposite direction with her husband in tow, who I overheard calling everyone "smelly". So I get the impression that the chinese new year celebrations on the Champs Elyses was not the place for me or the lady with a hightened sense of smell. Why do people enjoy being squeezed together for events like this? And why, why, WHY did the event managers not even use the whole of the avenue!!! There are very few events, particularly held on the Champs, among those I've made an effort to see that have appealed to me. There are too many people in Paris with the same intention of "seeing" these things. The trouble is you see very little, if and only if you have the patience of a saint, however you do get to feel everything - mainly sardine-type sensations. You paint a rosy and pretentious picture of events in Paris, maybe for your ratings, maybe because of your saint-like tolerance, I don't know, but one thing's for sure, reading your article made me burst into hysterical laughter.
Yours...