dimanche 31 août 2014

Expressions And Attraction

New Expressions
At dinner with friends Rene and Armelle I was asked what I thought of my new neighbour, a woman who has bought the house that used to belong to friends Neville and Liz and which sits just above mine. She had wanted to meet me before she moved in and Neville and Liz had arranged a time but she didn't show up until later. By then I had gone off to play boules. So my answer had to be that I didn't know. Armelle said she had spoken to another of my neighbours, Florence, and Florence said she and the new neighbour were like “cul et chemise”. It wasn't obvious to me what that meant until it was explained (very close, apparently). So, it was good to learn a new expression but I was frustrated to find that I couldn't think of the English equivalent. Later, Steve and Jo suggested “bosom friends/pals” or “being in each others pockets”. Problem solved but I don't want to forget my English.

Weeks ago Daniel had introduced me to the expression “heureux comme un poisson dans l'eau”. That time I could find the somewhat crude but definitely more expressive English equivalent: happy as a pig in shit.

Rules Of Attraction
Over lunch with Daniel he brought up the subject of a common female acquaintance and said how attractive he found her, pointing out her good figure. He has his Marie but said to me why didn't I, as it were, “go for it”. I agreed that she was, in general terms, an attractive woman but said I wasn't attracted to her. I've become used to attempts to pair me off, possibly because of my somewhat haphazard lifestyle or perhaps simply because I am a spare male. My friend Steve's wife Jo thinks I need a wife; I jestingly reply that I've already had one of those and didn't go that much on it. Neighbour Jean-Pierre is also on the job. Whenever I'm introduced to a single woman in his presence he gives me a nudge and says: “Elle est disponible, Yann, vas-y”.

The point is that Daniel seemed to need an explanation of why I didn't find this woman attractive, despite her obvious “assets”, and I struggled to say why. A friend, yes, and someone with whom I could happily pass some time; but attractive to me, no.

What I needed was some description of what attracts me to a woman so I tried to search back in my mind as to what had attracted me to women in the past, not necessarily just those with whom I had had a relationship. Daniel's “bums and tits” approach was certainly part of the picture, perhaps an essential part, but very far from all of it. Physically, I do know that I am attracted to women with slim rather than more generous figures but that is about as far as I could go in terms of general shape. I know that some characteristics of eyes and mouth play an important role but can't define what they are; it's not big/small, it's something else. Gestures too can be important. I remember once sitting in a café watching a woman at another table whose lower arm and hand movements were so flowing and graceful as to be almost a work of art in themselves; they fascinated me.

Of course there's personality as well, when I get to know someone, and I know that positive, happy, outgoing personalities attract me more than introspective morose ones. But saying that reveals little and is probably true for most people. Then there words, words, words. I like irony and studied understatement (I am of English origin, after all) and I often find ruefulness, self-deprecation and perceptive comments attractive, as well as a sense of humour (obviously). And common interests provide cement for a relationship but don't explain that fleeting moment, that “certain sourire” when attraction is first established.

The problem is that all these factors individually, although they all contribute, don't really explain anything. The answer is probably somewhere in my genes but I don't know anyone who carries a map of their genes around with them for comparison. Anyway, the subject is of more interest to my friends than to me at the moment. All I know, and it is enough for me, is that I can tell, usually fairly immediately, if I am attracted to a woman or not. Whether she happens to be “disponible” or not at the time is another question. And whether or why she is attracted to me is also something I can shed little light on.


“ Je suis comme je suis, je ne suis pas là pour plaire” (Prévert)

jeudi 21 août 2014

This And That

Stasis?
It occurs to me that I haven't written anything for over a month and that is longer than I like to leave my blog unmolested. The problem, I think, has been too much of the same enjoyment. The days and evenings of the summer seem to have flown by, cooler than usual, but still warm and sunny. I've enjoyed the fête days, the regular boules sessions, meeting up with the recidivist visitors who come only in the summer months and sharing meals with friends. But all that is as usual and there has been little out of the ordinary to comment on. Am I becoming stuck in a rut?

I don't know but feel I should be doing more. There's a limit to the time I can spend drinking Calvados on my balcony and contemplating my navel. The flower displays front and back just require watering now. All the jobs that needed doing in the house are now essentially done. I've thought about adding another layer of polish to the old hand-made tiles in living room and painting the 150 year-old tiles in my bedroom; the surface of these has really gone so there is no other way to renovate them. But these feel like jobs for the winter.

The job that needs doing and which I have been putting off (there's always one) is to recreate my website on Mollans. It's been offline for too long since I changed the host server. Recreating the pages shouldn't be too arduous from the back-ups I have but I know that redoing the SEO in three languages and declaring it to the search engines is going to be a chore. I really must start on it, though......tomorrow?

I do have trips to Italy in September to see my daughter and cousin and to England in October to see my son, which will break the routine, so maybe they will shake me out of my torpor. Or maybe I'm just becoming a bit neurotic in my old age.

Tenth Anniversary
It's ten years (eleven, actually, bit I forgot to celebrate last year), since the American national computer society (the ACM) gave me in 2003 the grand title of Pioneer of Software Engineering. This was richly undeserved, although the time lapse explains why. The recognition was for work to which I contributed in 1968. In fact, the work was done by some 40 of us at a NATO-sponsored think-tank. The key to my personal recognition was simply my age. I was 26 at the time and most of the participants were in their 40s and 50s; they contributed, with their knowledge and experience, much more than I ever could. The ACM wanted the think-tank commemorated with a paper given by one of the participants in Garmisch, Germany, where the original meeting had been held. But.......35 years had elapsed and most of the original participants were either dead, in their dotage or unable to travel. I was simply the one who was left.

In fact, I was only at the original meeting at all because of a series of coincidences and really shouldn't have been in such exalted company.  Yet the other participants, both at Garmisch and the follow-up meeting in Rome, seemed to value my contributions,which pleased but also puzzled me. One of the participants, Bob Barton, who was then VP Engineering for Burroughs Corp, described my role as that of a catalyst: I led the others to think in directions that they wouldn't otherwise have considered.  This could be explained by my background in languages rather than the maths and engineering backgrounds of the others; plus, I like to think, a certain ability with abstract thinking.  Anyway, it was a privilege for me to get to know and work with the other participants, most of whom were professors or heads of research at the peak of their careers, on what proved to be important fundamental thinking on future directions for software development. Their contributions certainly shaped my future thinking and career.