Evening in

Not writing is a way of letting time slip through my fingers exactly like the sand in an egg timer… funny how clichéd images are often the most appropriate.

 otiose

If donjon is "keep" then what is "dungeon"?

mur d’enceinte

Why does 'pregnant' in French translate as “enclosed”? and how can the same word mean hi fi speaker?

Traduced - shame and traduce them - Inner sanctum - Trémie

Came across trémie for the first time in a translation about cement milling (translated it as 'hopper') and then immediately afterwards, the same day, in a press release about a department store ('atrium')!!!

Not insuperable. Pell mell

Emissaire = outlet stream

 …the Financial Times How To Spend It magazine… muffled …  Shagreen … Peau de chagrin … apocryphal)??

to play its part in evening out the imbalances in the global economy

Becoming increasingly allergic to the way women are depicted by male writers, even Nobel prize winning novelists... men seem to be described and judged by what they are and what they do and women described and judged by what they're wearing and what they look like. It feels like a very bad joke. An omnipresent very bad joke.

years ago before the Stade de France was built I saw a friendly rugby match between the British Lions and France. The atmosphere at the Parc des Princes was electric, they played Chariots of Fire on a glorious sound system and the event would have been worth it for just the crowd and the music. But there was a moment during the match when the ball travelled through a series of elegant passes right across the pitch, seemingly right across the team. It was very exciting and pleasing to witness. Later I found myself describing that moment as “poetry in motion”. Reading George Szirtes’ post made me want to think about what that actually meant for me... the thrill of things falling miraculously into place, a good poem is language at its most miraculous…

Still thinking about the film, Atonement.

The first time I have deliberately watched a film instead of reading a book to get at content.

The Day of Atonement. Leviticus 23:27, 32 (CEV) says "Everyone must go without eating from the evening of the ninth to the evening of the tenth on the seventh month which is the Day of Atonement."

And it works. This reader/viewer, at least, sort of 'excuses' the writer because they are the one to produce the cultural artefact… which brings us pleasure. This harks back to the killing fields and the journalist who wins a prize because he let someone die and the question of living or observing life. However, I think this is a false problem as far as writing's concerned because writing is not really a choice in the usual sense of the word. Something decides to write itself through someone and not the other way round.

I've just translated the subtitles for a documentary film. I found myself almost crying at the end of it. It's not a sad film. Nothing "tragic" happens. It's the story of one French woman's love for England. A crazy quilt is a Victorian quilt with no pattern… Françoise Lebrun says you just assemble bits of cloth of different sizes, shapes, textures and colours, and try to create a kind of harmony.