Remembering: passion, betrayal, resurrection and ... painting

Today I taught KT on my own and turned up to spend time with the young people with some paint brushes and a clear idea that we would read the passion narrative together.

We began by doing about half an hour of remembering the passion story. To help with this I put on the table some branches of hazel - a bowl, a towel, a jug of water, one of the communion chalices and the communion patten. The more I use the remembered Bible method the more I realise how affiriming of people's inner Bibles it is. It was great with the young people today because the two less academic ones actually know the Bible stories much better. One thing that struck me as we were remembering together was how time is concertina-d - you go forwards backwards and sideways - and of course you're dealing with four gospels at the same time too so there's lots going on and amazing how details get remembered - one girl today remembered the ear being chopped off.

After our remembering we started reading Luke's gospel, aloud, sitting peaceably around the table. We began with the entry into Jerusalem - the branches on the table were to prompt thoughts of this. Palm Sunday is called "branches Sunday" in French. It is branches rather than palm crosses which are blessed and taken home from Roman Catholic churches. We ended with Jesus being laid in the tomb. It was qutie extraordinary sitting there on a wonderful sunny spring day with a group of adolescents remembering and reading the Bible. After reading we wrote prayers of thanksgiving for Christ's witness for the way he had chosen. Each of us tried to focus on three things. All of us wrote powerful words. I could tell that the group were completely engaged with the story. We also read the footwashing from John's gospel ... and we talked about prisoners of conscience and the work of Amnesty International and Christian Action Against Torture, and we prayed. We talked about violence, their experiences of it at school and in daily life.

After lunch we read the story of the resurrection in Luke's gospel, the Emmaus story right on through to the ascension. And we talked about hope and life, the meaning and gift of resurrection. And then we painted and they just took over and the act of painting became part of our remembering and understanding. They created a sort of Jackson Pollock like fabulous mess in the centre of the paper, then surrounded it with images of flowers and smiley faces hearts and points of colour and their names and words of hope. What was brilliant was listening to how they came to an agreement about what to do and then seeing their pure glee in all starting to paint together and throw the paint around. Wonderful energy. I think I was moved that they wanted to put their own names as part of the resurrection framework for the painting.
Now I just have to hope that they become friends with me on Facebook so that I get to see the photos of our work of art - yes I took my paintbrushes but forgot to take my camera so we'll have to wait a while for some pictures.

So do you take off your shoes or eat blackberries? The solace of poetry

... Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God[de]:

But only s/he who sees, takes off [her] shoes,

The rest sit around it, and pluck blackberries...

From Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The quote above came to me today at the bottom of an email from a friend and it sent me off reading Elizabeth Barratt Browning's poetry on the net. I realised that I have hardly read any Barratt since school and that I do not have a collected version of her poetry, something to treat myself to very soon. It is powerful stuff.
Spingtime is not at all the time to think of the autumn harvest of the hedges filled with the finger-staining dark fruit that are blackberries, bringing sweetness just before the winter. I love the flavour and fragrance of the humble blackberry - though given the choice I would probably still opt for the raspberry.
But the quote in this fragment (really that word seems to be one of the major subthemes to my blog these days) of the poem is actually a judgement on those sitting around gorging ourselves thoughtlessly on late summer fruits. The bramble, like the biblical burning bush, is full of thorns. An invitation, a reminder ... of God's grandeur, of humility, of the possibility that like Moses before us, we too could remove our shoes as we remember we are on holy ground.
I glimpsed some of the immensity and beauty of creation this evening, walking through the wonderful trees, smelling the sweet violets and listening to the wonderful birdsong as the sun persisted in picking out the primroses in the grass. With every step I gave thanks for the burgeoning season that is spring - these early flowers speak of fruit to come. Truly a miracle. God turns not only water into wine but petals into fruit and pollen into honey - earth is surely crammed with heaven!

So who are you? A manifestation of the human spirit or a failed reality?

The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you they are unique manifestations of the human spirit. Wade Davis

Comedies always have to end with a wedding ...

On Saturday night we went to the newly reopened Théatre du Châtelard and saw Les Juifs by Gottfried Lessing. The production is the first time the play has been produced in French and it was interesting to see such a German play but in French. Our neighbours from the copropriété Hervé Loichemol and Anne Durand directed and acted in the lively and very carefully thought through production. It was good to be in the newly renovated theatre and to bump into folk we know there. How amazing to be able to walk to a first class theatre production less than five minutes from my front door.
I have never seen or read the play in German. Although it is a comedy, it is almost impossible to see it today without being struck by the tragic undertow of the story. The way that Jews are referred to in the play is of course heard by us today in the light of the holocaust that took place two hundred years after it was written, but also now in many other ways. Today you could hear similar things said about Muslims in most parts of Europe, and other parts of the so-called "civilised" world too.
There is a love story between two individuals which is cut short by the weight of society's deep prejudice. You can save a man's life, save his fortune, win his respect and his friendship. Yet because you belong to a despised religion you cannot marry his daughter. Generosity will not in this instance be repaid with anything other than shock and disdain. Lessing allows some crumbs of understanding to dawn amongst the characters. They appear to step away from some of their absolute anti-semitism, but only because of the extreme graciousness of the generous Jewish character - who is of course almost too good to be true. Comedies traditionally always end with a wedding and this play so very nearly does too. In the end though the young women curls up and weeps in incomprehension. The Jew walks away, lonely in his generosity. He has no other option.
Have we learnt the lessons? Did anyone learn Lessing's lesson?
Played for laughs it is a deeply serious story. It spoke to me of how deeply engrained and irrational our hatreds and prejudices are, how hard, impossible even it can be to leave them behind if society itself is not open enough to allow individuals that freedom.

Water the source of life – and not of violence - reflection by Priscille Djomhoue

Women carrying water, Nile, Egypt. Photo: Walwyn/Flickr

Over on Seven Weeks for Water Professor Priscille Djomhoue reflects on the resonances between women's lives in the Bible and present day Africa. She also tells stories of women and girls suffering terrible violence and vulnerability because of lack of access to decent water and sanitation. Yet she asserts clearly "Water is the source of life, not of violence".

Here are two tasters from her meditation:

in many developing countries, not everyone has access to drinking water. In towns and in rural areas water is worth its weight in gold. People often have to travel long distances to find a supply of water in a river or a spring, and then carry it on their heads or their backs, exposing them to the risks of malformation of the spine or other back troubles. In many town areas, as is often the case in Cameroon, water has to be bought from a neighbour who has been able to have a well dug or who has mains water. That is not a new situation, since in the Bible, water was often such a scarce commodity that mention is made of people paying for it (Num. 20:17-19; Lam. 5:4).

In Africa, many women are denied their rights and do not have the money to buy water from their neighbours. This situation makes them vulnerable when an urgent need for water arises. In September 2009 in Yaoundé, in an area called Mendong, two young girls under the age of 12 were regularly sexually abused by the man in charge of the well where they often had to go to fetch water for their mothers. The police took up the matter, but it was too late. The physical and psychological damage done to them was immense.

Pretty little books by Elisabeth Ivanovsky

I managed to resist the first time I saw these lovely mini books by Elisabeth Ivanovsky but when in Paris last week I gave in and bought myself these 25 tiny little books, which are beautiful reproductions of books first published in the 1940s.
For me they are very evocative of the drawings and commentaries that my aunt used to do first in Berlin and then in London at the same period. Here books of drawing were bigger than these but have a similar flavour, Ivanovsky, like my aunt, was also a migrant. Perhaps that's part of what this style evokes for me.
Anyway, these really are books as works of art and I treasure them and love them. Tiny, pretty, pointless books that speak to me of fun, beauty, attention to detail, poetry and art. Looking at them makes me happy.

Believing in the little things - a lenten liturgy of fragments and cherry blossom

This morning we tweeted as part of worship - you can read our tweets at http://twitter.com/oikoumene. It was an interesting experiment, we did low tech tweeting with pencil and paper and I typed the tweets into the site in themed groups in free moments during the day.
Tweets are of course just little things, fragments of communication, yet even in just 140 keystrokes you can say something meaningful, you can link to a photo or audio file, to an article or video. You can try to "hook" people, you can make statements and of course you can also preach and pray using the medium.
Today I tried to get people to tweet in four ways - first a tweet of confession of brokenness, after that a tweet of hope for just peace after hearing the assurance of forgiveness and listening to Isaiah 52, then a tweeted biblical reflection on Matthew 6 25-33 - the lilies of the field; and finally prayer tweets of intercession for peace and justice.
We had a group of people from the Danish churches so many of today's tweets were in Danish, others were in German, French, Swahili and Tagalog (I think ...) so I had an interesting time typing them up - especially as Twitter was painfully slow this afternoon.

I did not preach but as an invitation to the biblical reflection I took with me a small branch of a pink flowering prunus. The gospel reading we listened to - in French - was of the lilies of the field. Yesterday I read this moving and beautifully written article by Joji Sakurai on cherry blossom and transience as a source of strength. She wrote:

For the Japanese, it will be a particularly poignant sight. Even in normal times, the flowers are a cause for rejoicing tinged with sadness, because they fall at the moment of their greatest beauty. They are the embodiment of a notion that is central to Japanese culture — "hakanasa," a hard-to-translate word that conveys the fragility, or evanescence, of life.

I was moved to learn that the cherry blossom is also the symbol of valour for the Samurai. this prompted me to think about how we so often have such grandiose plans for our projects - our peace-making and events too. Our work for a just peace today needs somehow to be like cherry blossom willing to bloom beautifully and then let go. Just-peace can never be about something set in stone. I believe in the little fragile things, in the arpilleras of the stitching peace exhibition, in the petals that gently fall and look like snow, in folk who find time to have a meal with one another and in the transience rather than in the permanence of our witness, in the God of small things. Like the cherry blossom, Christ too was at his most evanescent just before his life ended - how else can you read and understand his passionate words and actions, his foot washing in John's gospel, if it is not in some way about a vital fragile blossoming: "That all may be one".

If the blossom does not fall there will of course be no fruit. Only sacrifice bears fruit.

Here are two tweets written by someone at this morning's service, they sum up fragmentally but succinctly some of what I'm trying to say.

#IEPC Is 52:7 Mt 6:25 Transient lives contributing to the justice mercy & peace on earth
#IEPC Is 52:7 Mt 6:25 Transient blooms that bring everlasting beautiful memories

I grew up in blossom country in the Vale of Evesham, and thinking about the cherry blossom reminded me of A. E. Houseman's Loveliest of trees the cherry now ... which has its own strong intimations of mortality and celebration of nature. I like the idea of spring and winter almost being one in terms of the beauty, how the snow reminds of the springtime blossom. How sad that when I was studying it at school I never quite reached such gentle understanding of it. Now I can see how this deep human understanding of passing seasons and transience links east and west, north and south.

This evening coming home on the bus I realised that I shall never really be a systematic theologian but always a fragmentic theologian. Outside the main entrance to the Ecumenical Centre a prunus is in flower next to the white cross outside the chapel, it always makes me smile to see that in springtime, even on a wet grey morning like today. And seeing it reminded me of this which we sang in the chapel at the end of last winter, when spring was merely a vague promise, but nevertheless on the way:

“O make our barren trees to grow, our hands to blossom,
and let our lives bring forth such fruit that heals our neighbours’ grief and pain.”

It's by a Norwegian artist and hymn writer called Svein Ellingsen.

Poetry about blossom, thinking about the transience of blossom gives me strength, reminds me of the orchard in the garden at home and pure pleasure at beauty. It also offers a slightly subversive paradigm to my understanding, one that is glorious, mystical and filled with both pain and perfume. It is good to be a fragmentic theologian, a source of tearful strength.

Results of the Wine Tasting

Dr B writes: It was a wonderful evening sharing friendship and quotations about wine. Here are a few:

Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib und Gesang, der bleibt ein Thor sein Leben lang - Martin Luther

Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant, unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine - Joan Collins

Women and wine should life employ. Is there ought else on earth desirous - John Gay

No longer drink only water but take a little wine, it's good for digestion and good medicine for what ails you - 1 Timothy 5:23

Wein saufen ist Sünde, Wein trinken ist beten, Lasset uns beten - Theodor Heuss

We also put together an unscientific ranking of the wine tasting based on how from each bottle was drunk on Friday evening. Here are the results with the most popular at the top, and with links to the vineyards and information on where to buy the wines:

Red wines

1. Domaine Borie de Maurel, Minervois 2008, Esprit de l'Automne, Felines Minervois,
available from Caves de Vins, Grand'Rue, Ferney Voltaire http://www.cavevinsdefrance.fr/








2. Chateau Picon, Bordeaux Superieur 2009, Eynesse,
available from Carrefour Market, Avenue Voltaire, Ferney Voltaire








3. Domaine de l'Hortus, Coteaux de Languedoc Pic St Loup 2009, Valflaunes,
available from Caves de Vin, Ferney Voltaire









4. Chateau Brown, Le Colombier de Brown, Pessac-Leognan 2008, Leognan,
available from Vins Nicolas, Centre Commercial, Thoriy









5. Domaine de Mucelle, Pinot Noir, VdP Ain 2009, Challex,
available from Vins Nicolas, Centre Commercial, Thoriy









6. Chateau des Coccinelles, Côtes du Rhône 2008, Domazan,
available from Caves de Vin, Ferney Voltaire (last bottles in stock)








7. Domaine du Sacré Coeur, Pierre Trouée, St Chinian 2009, Assignan,
available from Carrefour Market, Avenue Voltaire, Ferney Voltaire








8. La Cave de Geneve, La Clémence, Gamaret de Genève 2009, Satigny,
available from the Coop, Geneva








White wines

1. Huber & Bleger, Vin d'Alsace, Gewuzrtraminer 2009, St Hippolyte,
available from Carrefour, Segny









2. Clotilde Davenne, St Bris 2009, Préhy,
available from Carrefour, Segny










3. Chateau Bichon Cassignols, Graves 2009, La Brède,
available from Caves de Vin, Ferney Voltaire









Vins de Pays des Coteaux d'Enserune, Chardonnay & Viognier 2010,
availlable from Carrefour Market, Ferney - not classified as it was also the aperitif de bienvenue ...

Birthday wine tasting

The weekend has been pleasantly busy with social pursuits as we celenbrated Stephen's birthday with a wine-tasting on Friday evening and Saturday morning. It was good to take time out with friends and fun to put together wine and cheese to share together.
Everyone attending brought a quote about wine. More details in a special guest post by Dr B.

Word of the day - entonnoir à conversion

Those who follow me on twitter know that I attended a good seminar on social media last week at the university of Geneva. One of the terms I really liked was "entonnoir à conversion" - conversion funnel.
I suppose it made me smile that a term which has very clear theological overtones for me is really just a blatant way to get people to find their way more easily around websites and even spend money there.
However advocacy websites need to provide some kind of similar simple pay off. Too often we make it really complicated for people to sign a petition, upload a photo or click and say they agree or support us. In the facebook quick click "like" generation we really need to get with the programme. Too often we get obsessed with wanting information from people rather than in building the relationship and facilitating involvement.
More about the seminar in coming days - it's given me lots ot think about.
However oddly enough it was the theological topic of conversion that was the conversion funnel that got me into blogging, as this blog started with a blog about ethical conversion.

Le miel du rocher - concrete turns to honey in St Denis

We came back from our afternoon wandering around the multicultural streets of St Denis with some little pots of miel béton - concrete honey! Far from being concrete the honey is runny and fragrant. It comes from the "banque de miel" which has some buzzy and bee-like qualities on its website and also has a blog. So you've got the idea this is urban honey, these days with all the worries about the health of bees, urban bees are often those who seem to show the least dign of illness - partly because tehre is little chance of them feeding on monocultures.
Anyway if we do end up living in St Denis I think I'll try and invest in heaven (investir le ciel) and become part of this brilliant project which makes sweet honey come from the concrete rock. I love the fact that the banque de miel is run by the "parti poétique"! Now of course in secular France I should perhaps not point out to them that the image is straight from those poems in the Bible called the Psalms - le miel du rocher Psalm 81.16 - I think a modern translation would be honey from concrete.
Long may the urban bees produce honey for us.

Two mice and a piece of cheese

Yes, I know a very silly picture, but it made us laugh. I'll have you know that is a particularly delicious bit of Laguiole, very tasty.

Do no harm, leave a lingering trace ...

Bits and pieces of our lives interact in the living room piling system and the fragments of life made up of old newspapers, new books and things waiting hopefully for attention.
One of the reasons I still prefer real newspapers to the online variety is the serendipity of reading while (not) tidying up. So it was yesterday evening in my desultory attempt to look as if I might be cleaning up the sofa I got side tracked into reading Michael Billington's interview with Peter Brook. I found Brook's idea about a pared down Magic Flute which concentrates on the music, on character, story and situation rather wonderful. Even if I never get to see it, just reading about it inspired me to think about opera and also my own "performance art" liturgy in new ways.
However, what moved me and offered me some sense of meaning about my life was Brook saying this at the end of the article when asked about his legacy:

"What does touch me is when people come up to me in the street, as they sometimes do since they mistakenly think I've retired, and talk about some experience that has remained with them. That for me is the only real legacy: the idea that one has left a lingering trace in people's memories. In the end, that's all a director can hope to do."

Brook's humility of ambition - coupled with brilliant artistic vision- impressed me and moved me because it challenged me - I suspect that I would hope to leave rather more than a trace and yet I also know that at the end of my life probably the most I shall be able to say about my achievements is that I will have managed to offer grieving families meaningful funerals and joyful couples happy weddings. Fragmentary traces.
So I began pondering "impact" - our desire, my desire, to "make a difference" to "have a legacy" - and I thought about two women working in development I interviewed earlier this year. They were working according to the "do no harm" development principles - make a positive difference but don't just try to have impact for the sake of being seen to do something. "Do no harm" takes longer but tends to become the work of the people, of whole communities much more, and as a result of that it tends to be much more sustainable. In terms of providing rural communities with water say, that has to be a good thing. I have no idea whether it can be applied say to mission or ecumenism or church life but I like its conscious humility and desire to work with rather than dominate and impose. Yet I know how much, like Psalmist in Psalm 90, I am motivated by wanting my work to have a lasting result (Donne à nos travaux un résultat durable).
Meanwhile a further fragment of a lingering trace is Andrei Makine's latest book, (the entrance to my new place of work is framed by bookshops, this is not good and I succombed when visiting Paris this week) which beautifully evokes how even in a life of suffering brief eternal loves can be transformative.
So rather than having impact I shall hope to linger and to seek to be ambitious with my vision rahter than with my impact. Yet as I reflect on my carbon footprint and on the plastic bottles I will have used in my lifetime I shall also have to face up to the fact that be it impact or lingering, it will sadly not have been as sustainable or without harm as I might aspire to. So I shall focus on the hope of transformative eternal love.

The story of water deprivation is linked to so many other oppressions

At worship this morning Maike Gorsboth and Christine Housel preached a powerful and moving dialogue sermon, as we marked the international day for the elimination of racial discrimination and world water day.

As we ponder the present day and biblical stories, we cry out with the prophets for justice, and for mercy. The earth and the people are violated. Communities and nations are in conflict. Commerce and power dominate. We seek repentance. We honour the prophets among us. We seek to be and are a part of the solution. We open ourselves to the ways of peace, and we ask God to lead us to become ever-better peacemakers and prophets.

The liturgy also had both poignant and moving moments. Before the prayer of confession a series of people stood up from their places and said phrases like these:

In the country with the world's highest incidence of rape, statistics indicate that a girl born today has only a one in three chance of finishing school, and a one in two chance of being raped.

Those defending justice and human rights often become victims of death threats, assaults, criminalization and murder.

Every year, millions die from poverty – from malnutrition, from the lack of safe water and sanitation, from the lack of medical treatment and health care.

We also fed our prayers on cards in different languages on blue coloured cards through the congregation like a bucket chain to the reader at the front. This way of praying was inspired by one of the arpilleras in our stitching peace exhibition showing a bucket chain. At the end of the service we shared the peace and in the lobby afterwards all shared a drink of water rather than the more traditional post service coffee.

An excellent start to the week.

You can read more about the Ecumenical Water Network's Seven Weeks for Water here. And abotu the World Student Christian Federation's Water Justice campaign here.

And don't forget to read the sermon and the liturgy - where you can also see a picutre of the arpillera.

News from Ferney Voltaire centre of the universe - second theatre opens!

Last week Ferney voltaire second theatre re-opened its doors. The Théatre du Châtelard which is about 200 metres from our front door has been completely renovated and rebuilt.
Ferney also has another small theatre "La Comédie" which also has a lively programme. It's pretty amazing to live in a small town (I tend to think of it as a village really) whichmanages to keep two theatres going.
The Châtelard opens with a play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing which has never played in France before called Les Juifs. Our neighbour Hervé Loichmol is the artistic director of the Châtelard, his partner Anne Durand is one of the actors. So we are hoping to get tickets and walk along the road before the week is out! This is what Hervé says about why he chose this play:

C'est une pièce étonnante à plusieurs titres. Pour la première fois, elle critique ouvertement l'antijudaïsme chrétien, c'est-à-dire l'hostilité envers le judaïsme en tant que religion. C'est aussi la première oeuvre montrant un juif sous un angle positif. L'étonnement réside aussi dans la jeunesse de l'auteur. Lessing a 20 ans quand il écrit cette pièce et il n'est pas juif. Il y a chez lui une conscience politique incroyable.

You can find out more about the upcoming programme at the Châtleard here and to be fair about the Comédie here.

Stitching Peace - while war rages ...

Yesterday afternoon I took the catechism group around the Stitching Peace exhibition. I've shown groups of children and adults around the exhibtion during the four weeks it has been in the Ecumenical Centre chapel. It's been a really good and meaningful experience.
Tomorrow we take the exhibition down, pack it up and it will travel back to Northern Ireland and rest before transferring to Jamaica in May when it will be at the core of the International Ecumenical Peace Convication.
Each of the pieces in the exhibtions tells a story of ways individuals and groups can build non-violent and committed societies based on values like solidarity and respect. These are stories born of pain, anger and often deep poverty and oppression. Powerfully though the pieces selected show that even in such situations it is possible to choose to stitch peace.
Showing the young people and some of their parents the chapel yesterday we also looked for a while at the icon of the stoning of St Stephen which the WCC received at the outset of the Decade to Overcome Violence. And again, as I do week in week out with visitors groups, I asked them to consider the physical stones and violence we may each be capable of doing with our hands - the icon shows two people throwing large stones down on St Stephen. And the violence we do with our words - the icon shows Saul (later to become St Paul) looking on, his words have encouraged the violence which makes St Stephen a martyr.
This morning I woke to the news of missile attacks on Libya ... is this where my prayers for the people of Libya lead? Unbearable thought. Is this what is really needed? Will it work - what is hoped for from this?
Pictures of fighter jets and macho military paraphernalia have replaced pictures of the devastation in Japan. These bombs and swift response units make us feel we are powerful. The reality of war is deeply sickening. And of course part of that reality is Ghadaffi having already chopped off water and electricity supplies to whole cities - an act of war as deadly as any missile.
I know myself well enough to know that I am not a true pacifist, but I do not believe in the ease of war nor in retributive violence, (read a reflection from Phil Wood on that). Of course it is hard to weigh up the responsibility to act and defend the innocent against the resort to war, but do we tend towards military solutions more easily simply because the armaments are available to us?

I know that tomorrow as we take down the fragile textiles I know that shall be thinking about how terribly tiny and insignificant, how poverty stricken yet beautiful and creative our efforts at stitching peace are. One missile probably costs more than the whole budget for the peace convocation in Jamaica. When the the women under Pinochet took their flour bags and started stitching their stories and pain in simple powerful ways, they showed that despite horrific oppression and poverty, the human spirit will find a way to express anger, pain and the desire for justice. That same human spirit will also find a way in the depths of distress to dance, laugh, celebrate and make music. To stitch peace we need also to push those values to the fore.
I shall try to go on believing in the small "signs of the kingdom" type of peace building, which relies on flawed, hurting and wonderful human beings telling their stories with creativity. I'm still enough of an idealist to think that "retributive reconciliation" can begin with needle and thread much more effectively than with exhorbitantly priced precision armaments.

And I should add that some of these thoughts are also triggered by conversations with one of the teenage boys about his future plans. He really wants to become a fighter pilot. And it is of course a really great career. Needle and thread or the creative arts don't quite offer the same attractive adrenaline highs ... do I want to package Christ's gospel of the Beatitudes in a similarly attractive way - might I even have the capacity to do that, to understand contemporary culture well enough to be able to do that?

Maike's birthday

Last night we had a wonderful evening with great friends at the fabulous Chanteclair which just happens to be opposite where we live ...

Off the wall images from Paris and St Denis

On Thursday and Friday we were in Paris and also in St Denis, where we may end up living. It's a fascinating and very lively city in its own right and is home to the Basilica where the kings of France were crowned and buried. I had a chance to meet up with some of my future colleagues and we had a meal with my brother.
Anyway, the collage gives you a bit of a taste of where we've been.