Wednesday, July 18, 2007

"... made the Bordeaux to Toulouse run in less than twelve parsecs."

Am currently in the South of France with Patch. We are larking about in a Transit van, Patch on main driving duties, me on backup, much like Han Solo and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcom. Although I don't remember Han Solo having to stop driving every now and then because his too-short summery dress is riding up. Or Chewbacca complaining because he left his Kate Atkinson paperback* on the sun in the dashboard and the binding glue melted so all the pages are starting to fall out.

Songs you don't really want to have on while driving your (not technically insured in foreign climes) van on narrow winding roads only to have another van come too fast round a corner and smash off your wing mirror: that high-pitched one by Mika.

Internet access was cut off after being at the house for one day BLOODY FRENCH. Still, I got a lot of ore mined in Warcraft, and that's what this week's really all about (it isn't, we're sorting out Patch's mum's house so it can be sold).

Patch and her father are putting in for repairs at a nearby asteroid field village. I'm keeping an eye out for Mynocks.


* the new one, it's very good.

12 comments:

Sylvia said...

Sounds more like Summer Holiday than Star Wars!

Fat Roland said...

You're keeping an eye out for your what?

Anonymous said...

'that high-pitched one by Mika', that's a bit vague, all his songs sound like that.

Mangonel said...

Aah - Harrison Ford in a too-short summery dress' . . .


Sorry - where was I? Oh yes - Mika's a boy? Name's a bit girlie, what, what?

Never heard of him.

Valerie Polichar said...

{much laughing here}

The problem I have with playing online games and then driving is that I still think I'm in the game, and I drive really aggressively, and swerve a lot. At imaginary monsters. Bang! Just ran over a troll ninja. Woohoo! While my passenger cowers in the next seat...

Dave said...

I never understood that quote. A parsec is a measure of distance (approximately 3.086×1016 m, or about 3.262 light-years) - it's like saying 'I made the Sheffield to Norwich run in less than 100 miles'.

James Henry said...

MYNOCKS

Anonymous said...

yeah yeah, just rub it in a bit more please. some of us are stuck in rainy scotland you know. out of charity could you not pretend to be in swindon or cleveland or somewhere, instead of the south of france?

James Henry said...

If it's any consolation, it's terribly hot, which I can't cope with, so I'm going for a swim in Patch's dad's pool now.

I hope this helps.

Anonymous said...

You're just asking for a smack aren't you?

patroclus said...

Dave: I have thought about your point a lot, and during one hot sleepless night it occurred to me that perhaps doing the Kessel Run is like data packets travelling across a network, in that the aim is to get to the destination point using the shortest possible route, rather than in the shortest possible time.

So you can see that, unlike some, I did not spend my holiday idling in the pool waiting for calls from major broadcasting networks, but engaged in solid thought about Important Things.

Unknown said...

I'll bet that Mika song was on the radio rather than on a CD of your choosing. I was recently driving near Bordeaux and it seemed to be the only song on the playlist of every southwest French radio station (apart from the ones in which men with beards talk endlessly about politics.)

And yes. You can tell they have beards on the radio. You can hear the hairs scuffing the microphone.