Smothered - 2nd Gasp

Those jeans are just not tight enough!

Well we all know about the Black T-Shirt Of Blackness.

We also know what a big strong boy he is.

Smothered - First Gasp

There's an awful lot of shirt-sleeve in this episode, with a corresponding wealth of beshirted shoulder.

Clever Bobby and the barfly. "Enjoy your evening".

As it's not possible for people to save pictures that are in slideshows, please feel free to visit my Photobucket album at http://s86.photobucket.com/albums/k100/valw1953/ and help yourselves. I imagine you can send them to yourselves by clicking on the "share" button, but I've never tried it myself, so if it doesn't work, let me know on this blog, and I'll put my email address back into my profile again. Then you can send me your email address and I'll send the ones you choose to you.

Please be aware, though, that I started the album before I could cap, so some are not my own. "My Guy", "Good Luck" and "Claire Dolan" are mine, as are most of the LOCI Seasons 1-3.

Enjoy!

First Trip to France

In 1970, when I was 17 I won a language scholarship to spend 10 weeks in France. Only about 50-60 London school pupils a year got them, so it was quite an honour.

The first 3 weeks were spent in Boulogne-Sur-Mer, a ferry and fishing port on the English Channel, studying in a French school. Then we all split up to travel to the various families we had made arrangements to stay with.

Boulogne - a road to the old town.

My first stay was in the Loire Valley, where the beautiful chateaux of the French Renaissance stand. I was staying with a family who ran a summer boarding scheme for French schoolchildren. One of their friends was an elderly French woman, a teacher of English, who repaid the hospitality she had received in England over the years by taking me to some of these glorious mansions.

Chambord

Chenonceaux, home of the King's mistress, Diane de Poitiers.


Amboise.



The Chateau du Clos Luce in Amboise is where Leonardo de Vinci spent the last years of his life. It now houses an exhibition of models made of his amazingly prescient designs - armoured tanks, helicopters, etc.

Then I went to the south of the country to Montpellier. I spent most days on the beach at the nearby Palavas-Les-Flots.

Montpellier



The family took me to the millionaires' playground, La Grande Motte.

Travelling alone on trains and boats was an incredible experience for one so young. Even though I could translate a piece of French literature into English, I had never learnt the French for a return train ticket. I had to learn it all on the wing. It was very "character-forming".

By the time I came home, I was dreaming in French.

It's Official...

...the Internet is rendered useless by misspellings.

I have a painting by a French artist named Suger.

I tried to Google her name and found that many of the large number of hits were because people had misspelt "sugar".

Why I can't turn off my computer.

This is my wallpaper.

I think it is the most exquisite picture of Vincent I have ever seen - and that's really saying something.

To try and help me shut down the computer, yesterday I decided to print the picture out. It took an hour of fiddling, changing leads on the printer and rebooting, and I finally got it to print. At which point I remembered why this wonderful and expensive "photo" printer is on my list for replacement. It prints in inaccurate (sometimes bizarre) colours, and you can see lines where the ink heads cross the paper. The picture came out dark and stripey. So I'm still having trouble forcing myself to log off.

Anti-Thesis - 4th Draft

Gone!

And she didn't even leave scones and sherry. (Is that really what Americans think of us Brits?)

Anti-Thesis - 3rd Draft

Who's uncomfortable now, eh?








































































































If you hate Nicole, just comfort yourself with the thought that he gets into her head as well as she gets into his.

Anti-Thesis - 2nd Draft

Quiet - genius at work.

Bobby the metrosexual.

Baffled Bobby.

Concentration.

Bobby hurting - kill the witch!

She makes his lips so dry, he's tense, poor baby.

Now she's made him angry!

And the end of the interrogation is still to come - sorry, Nicole-haters.