Day 522 - 28th August 2008

Today was a first for me, albeit a rather strange first experience to talk about I suppose.

Never in all my days, and all the places I have been to, all the things I have seen, never, have I seen a rag and bone man. Today, I saw three.

It's an odd thing really, something that doesn't quite seem to belong to my generation, but with the rising price of scrap metal, I think we'll probably be seeing quite a few more of these guys. The man driving the van was shouting something unintelligible, I am told that it probably was 'old iron', but it sounded more like 'uuuuuhhhhghhuuuuuuhhh'.

Also, as promised, I went to see the new Batman film today, 'The Dark Knight', and it was, as expected, really good. Heath Ledger, who is now sadly no longer with us, played one of the greatest villains ever as the joker, a psychopath like we've never quite seen before. So, I'm glad to recommend it to anybody who is thinking of going, although with all the hype about it I'm surprised you haven't been already!

Day 521 - 27th August 2008

Shamefully, I know cock all about plants. I can recognise some, and I know generally how they work, but that's about it.

That's why I forgot to tell anyone to water my house plant whilst I was in France, and now I don't know if it's completely screwed or not. The leaves are drooping badly, anyone who saw the first picture of it will see the difference, but they are still mainly green. Well, greenish anyway.

Whatever the problem, I watered it and hoped for the best, although I am told there has been little sunlight - bad news if you're a plant.

There's not been much to talk about today really, I watched a load of Top Gears I taped over the break which was nice, but it's not particularly interesting to talk about.

Tomorrow, there's a chance we might go and see the new Batman, The Dark Knight, which I'll tell you all about if I go.

Day 520 - 26th August 2008

This is it, my final picture of France for the summer. It's not flashy, not interesting, it's just my house and it's where I've been for the last two months.

Now, it is from Britain that I type this, the sky isn't blue like in the picture, but I'm not drinking eight pints of water every night.

I don't ever get homesick, and I don't ever really miss much at all about anything, but I must say I am glad to be back. It's been a long time to have been gone, and I was wondering if they'd let me back into England at the end. Anyway, the flight was terrible, you get what you pay for with Ryanair, and I really need some sleep, so goodnight.

Oh, just as a footnote, you can now access this site by typing www.benspictureoftheday.com into your browser - neat, huh?

Day 519 - 25th August 2008

This is the last night I am spending in France this summer. Having spent a touch over two months here, it feels somewhat strange to be leaving.

Tomorrow's flight is in the evening though, so it doesn't quite feel all over yet. My holiday is far from over though, as I still have a month to go before I go back to University, and I'm off to the Orkney Islands on Saturday. I know, you don't have to tell me, it's a hard life.

Day 518 - 24th August 2008

The Olympics have left Beijing today and the metaphorical 'baton' has been passed over to London in preparation for the next four years.

There was a little show on Britain's behalf at the closing ceremony, Boris Johnson was there, but he wasn't one of the dancers. There was a big red bus and some dancers with umbrellas all around it, the bus drove in and stopped. They actually put a real bus stop in the stadium, and there were people waiting for it to arrive! It wasn't that real though, only one bus came after the wait.

Anyway, the bus roof opened up revealing a skyline of London, and some more dancers, then Leona Lewis, X Factor winner turned international superstar, rose out of the bus on a plinth and started singing, well, at this point she wasn't really doing much. Then, Jimmy Page rises up along side her playing the intro to 'Whole Lotta Love', and they carry on the song with her doing it.

Leona Lewis singing Led Zeppelin admittedly felt rather odd, and any other time it would have been simply ridiculous, but on that night in Beijing, it was pretty cool. In fact, we managed to out-cool the Chinese three-hour effort with that simple one-song gig. Good job; it shows you don't have to spend a whole economy to get results.

Day 517 - 23rd August 2008

For some reason I can't explain, a feeling has come upon us all that the holiday is slowly grinding to a halt, which it is, but it is still nonetheless interesting that you can almost smell that it's nearly time to go home. It's probably purely psychological, but I wonder sometimes if some things do change towards the end, like small things things in our behaviour that we subconsciously pick up on, which in turn makes us feel a certain way.

Anyway, it's all very deep and complicated, and far far out of my depth - for all I know I could be talking tripe, but it does seem to make some sense to me. Some.

So, there's been a nineteenth gold medal for Britain today in boxing, our brave lad apparently got awarded some penalty point in his favour because his Cuban opponent bit him in the chest. Honestly, the things our brave boys go through to bring gold back home... It's the final day tomorrow and I should think that the UK is pretty pleased with its recent upturn in the precious metals business, let's hope it carries on to London 2012.

In other sports - STOKE WON! That's right, a last minute Sidibe header meant we beat Aston Villa at home 3-2. Following a crushing defeat away to Bolton last week in their first premiership game, the second match went somewhat better. Again, they've already matched Derby's win record of last year, who only one once the whole season - let's hope the potters keep it up and stay in the big boy's league for next year.

Day 516 - 22nd August 2008

So, in a bored, some would say 'low point', I decided to play the trumpet in a sombrero. Please, do not judge me for this.

In other news, Team GB has won yet another gold medal, this time in K1 1000m. That involves a boat and a paddle of some sort, I assume the 'K' stands for 'Kayak'. It has to be said that just at the point I thought I had grasped the difference between a canoe and a kayak, the French television service have got me all confused again about it. As it happens, they keep getting it wrong too, saying that 'when someone says kayak, they often mean canoe so don't worry'. Thanks for that then, I know France has won sod all this time round, but there's no need to keep us in the shade about what other countries are up to!

On that note, I should mention again that the French are doing rather miserably, so I try to hold back from talking about the Olympics too much in front of the locals. They were being rather upbeat about it all on the TV, talking about medals to come, and dwelling on failures for only a brief few minutes.

Actually, there haven't been that many failures on the French team, just not many victories. Out of 34 medals, they have 5 gold ones, including one in Greco-roman wrestling and one in the BMX race - both of which they are reluctant to count as sports. It's a shame for them, but I don't care about them - I can sympathise though, Britain has had her fair share of failures in the past. It's just that in Britain, we cynically expect failure, and are pleasantly surprised when we win anything. In France, it's the opposite, they are so sure of victory that when failure occurs, the disappointment is far greater.