Fantastic!

Just when I thought the day couldn't get any better: Mrs. Fingers comes back from having her hair newly sandblasted bearing a large contract-shaped envelope postmarked Northern Bavaria. Yup, I'm now officially off to spend my summer with Valkyries, Knights of the Grail and various other colourful characters born of the tip of Richard Wagner's phenomenal quill. It'll be the eighth summer in a row and long may it last; for Wagner lovers, professional or otherwise, life can't pour you many more powerful love potions than a summer in Bayreuth.

It also means I'll be heading over to the Czech Republic again for some cut-price, first-class dental treatment. A series of little push-me-pull-you trains snake through bohemian border country to Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary) where I found someone who'll basically replace my tombstones for a fraction of the cost of having them done anywhere points west of the old Iron Curtain. Another two or three trips and I should be able to advertise toothpaste or run for Prime Minister, seeing as regular gnashers appeared to be Blair's only qualification for the job.

Weather Report

The sun has returned to the south-west, smiles are coming back, coats are getting lighter. I've been amazed these last few weeks how the temperature can lurch from one extreme to another, to the point where you need two sets of clothing on permanent standby. It's unusual for this normally temperate part of the world but I'm not going to fall into the trap of ignorantly spouting any ill-founded theories on global warming, man-made or otherwise.

In fact, the most intriguing statistic of an otherwise pretty slow weekend is the fact that Marine le Pen tops the polls in peoples' voting intentions come the next presidential election. This will change, of course, once Arab revolutions, public debates on the place of Islam in French society and other potentially immigration-related subjects make way for what really interests the great unwashed, namely, video footage of Gérard Dépardieu leaving a restaurant or politicians tripping over their words, as did recently Rachida Dati, being interviewed about national economic prospects, inadvertently implied that there wasn't enough oral sex going on in France. Don't believe me? Google her name and add 'lapsus'.

I've also decided to stop smoking at the end of the month and Alan Carr is helping prepare me. I won't go on about it as it's intensely boring, but I really want it to work this time. Mrs. F and the Fingernails are, unsurprisingly, very much in favour. Maybe I'll be more relaxed once I'm off the weed, I don't know; the only certain thing is that I'm 48 and I can't go on like this indefinitely.

Enjoy the sun, wherever you are.

Free and Easy.

The simplest and most rewarding pleasure in life when you're a parent is to cuddle your children. The Fingernails decided over dinner that what was really needed before bedtime was a tickling match, so after clearing the kitchen, that's exactly what we had. There were lots of screams and lots of laughter, then the little ones announced they wanted a round of hugs, so we lay there for a few minutes with our arms around one another until Fingernail II said she'd had enough. Fortunately, the Social Services weren't on the prowl, as they might have confiscated our children on the grounds that we were being too affectionate, or some such tosh.

Whatever has happened during the day, just the sight of your own children as you get home heals everything. Nature knew what it was doing.

Stand on your own two feet.

You can tell a lot about people by the way they walk. Some progress with purposeful tread, others amble and meander with no apparent goal. My feeling is that the society in which you live is partially responsible for this. Take London and New York, for example. The pace is fast, the populace is going somewhere and wishes to achieve, close or progress. Countries where the State is preponderant do not move with the same verve or intent; their lives have been taken care of; all they need to do is avoid traffic and hold their hand out. I often think about this as I cycle through pedestrian masses on on my way to work. Many on foot, brandishing shopping bags full of rubbish they'll never need or use, are happy to stop and let the person coming towards them take responsibility for the safe conclusion of the momentary encounter. Rarely do you see people look up, assess the traffic and steer a path accordingly. Some do tend to slalom, keeping their momentum even if the resultant diversion means adding a few yards to their journey. Toulouse City Council has recently given me an unwitting extra agar plate for my studies: they've closed half of the main shopping street to begin remodeling the whole city centre area. Rue Alsace-Lorraine now has half the space for the same amount of people and, strangely, the people are starting to show more initiative: before the work started, with a wonderful, broad thoroughfare at their disposal, the various shoppers, businesspeople and terminal idlers would wander listlessly and aimlessly the length and breadth of the thoroughfare, their movements beyond interpretation and anticipation. Now, with half the space available to them they've become more observant. It's easier to make eye contact and broadcast directional intent as more and more people are aware of the lack of space. And this in a country where 35% of the working populace is sucking rapaciously on Marianne's shapely, munificent jugs.

A Harvard Economics professor recently published a book stating that 'Cities are civilisation's greatest achievement'. Apparently, they foster and nurture creativity, encourage interaction and raise awareness and tolerance. I can only imagine he's never been to Birmingham, but that's not the point, here. If we take the idea of a city as a place where people are huddled together, then I can only agree with him; given too much space, people lose the connection to others. Shoe-horn them into a sardine tin and they start to adapt to their surroundings. To push the analogy a step further, we can also cite the statistic, true or fictive, that racism is most marked amongst people who've had the least to do with foreigners.

A five-minute bike ride to work can do wonders for your tenuous grasp of shallow pop psychology, you know.