what we've got

It’s an adage of public relations that ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’, as if simply being in the public memory ensures the kind of success that leads to profits.

That can’t be. I remember Jeffrey Archer, Anthea Turner and wasshername – that gun-toting, twitching, winking, hockey mom… ah, yes, Sarah Palin – but no matter how large a chunk of valuable memory I inadvertently devote to them, it will never convince me they are valuable for anything other than how to get things woefully wrong. Is remembering someone or company for their huge failures really useful to them?

I doubt it, as the recent example of Neal’s Yard tells me.

I will forever remember Neal’s Yard, purveyor of expensive homeopathic potions and lotions, for their huge PR error in failing to answer many of the questions fired at them during a Guardian live debate. They forgot that the public can be a taxing lot, firing all sorts of awkward questions about how far the efficacy of these ‘remedies’ can be proven scientifically.

I’ll remember, too, being prompted to go online and find further evidence of how Neal’s Yard struggle to find what they might call a ‘PR solution’ to the inestimable problem of their claim that certain remedies can help prevent one of the world’s most deadly of diseases, malaria.

It’s these connections between memory and experience that prevent us from making the same mistakes twice. Bad publicity is a reminder that not all products and services – and ethics – are created equally and this bears no relation to the amount of infamy they occupy in our collective consciousness: lest we forget.

Men and women, I should say

How did people emigrate before the web? With difficulty, surely. It’s been useful for almost every step and some of our move would have been impossible I feel without it, at least in the time we had. Of course, underpinning all the technology were two people filling boxes, completing forms, driving miles and pulling the levers and pressing the buttons. But the web has been outstandingly useful for several particular reasons. Here’s a quick fire list in no particular order – I’m certain I’ve left some things out – but like Kane’s gang (as if you’ve forgotten!) it’s what we’ve got:

Interviewed for job online. Without Jennie getting a job for the UN none of this would have happened. In her application she sent all documents online; underwent a test that was performed over the net; was interviewed via web-based video conferencing; and finally sent the medical / admin documents in PDF form to Kuala Lumpar for processing.

Google Docs for a to-do/resources list. This was invaluable and still is. It’s not as complex as something like specific to-do collaborative tools like RemembertheMilk, but it worked beautifully. Simple crossing things out with strikethrough was enough to say they’ve been done. We also collected resources, figures, phone numbers and so on here and worked on independently and together.

Synchronising weblinks using FoxMarks. We independently found various links as we browsed the web, hungry for a fix on our new country. I set up all computers with the favourites tool Foxmarks, regardless of operating system, to synchronise the links we dropped into a ‘Moving on’ folder in our browser. Worked well when Google Docs (eventually) became swamped. Sometimes we used Delicious, but not as often as I thought we would.

Sign-up service for moving. There are a handful of agencies online who make it easier to move by you entering some details and they doing some work for you, like letting the gas company know you need a meter reading and so on. We used these with partial success – sometimes the manual way is best.

Royal Mail’s redirection service. We have mail redirected and using this service meant we didn’t need to trundle down to the post office and take our identity documents, they check details online. We’d need the legs for the thousands of times we climbed the ladder to the loft to pack its contents.

Skype telephony. We bought a UK online number, so our friends and family in the UK would only need to call a local (to them) phone number. Skype has worked really well so far and since we’re not settled for a few months, goes where we go. It also works nicely on my iPhone, which saves us a fortune. We were able to stay in touch with our regi (estate agent) easily and without incurring further mobile phone costs.

Keeping the social network alive. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, this blog – all are things we use to share our experiences here and keep in contact with others. This is important when you’re away from home, and I’ve found it really useful to have some sense of continuity in terms of who I’m speaking with (especially when discussing the cricket, which is only available online here via the BBC’s wonderful TMS – this feels like I’ve never left!).

Transferring money. We now have to work with several currencies – US dollar, Swiss francs, Euro and GB sterling – and so being able to transfer them quickly online (and often without charge) helped us enormously. Of course, this isn’t just something you need when you move. What’s more, currency conversion rates online are always up-to-date.

Checking in online when flying. You’ve used this already, maybe, but printing out a boarding pass for flying seems novel still, and helped get things going when we were a rush: Jennie flew to Geneva and back the same day to secure our place in France.

Google chat. Sometimes email isn’t enough, and you need to make decisions through synchronous discussion. Google’s online chat, via GoogleMail, was vital for the hundreds of discussions we had when not together.

Removal quotes online. You enter your details and you get quotes from multiple removal companies. This helps get the best price of course, and is also a necessary part of claiming for expenses.

Google Maps and Google Earth. Knowing where you’re going to live and its local amenities used to something you needed to find out when you turn up. And although it’s still a thrill to find new restaurants and bars, knowing where the bank or petrol station is not so much fun. What’s more, we used Google Maps to find directions. If only it plugged into…

Satellite navigation. We bought a TomTom One XL, and this has the advantage of connecting to the web and downloading changes that users have made to the maps. In short, it corrects the errors that sat navs are annoyingly prone to, especially in areas under construction. Worked like a dream, although I wouldn’t say that it’s perfect even now.

It has helped me learn a new language. There is an embarrassment of excellent online resources for learning French. Some of the best are About.com‘s guide (with the inaptly named – for a grammarian at least – Laura Lawless); and the BBC comes up trumps again. Although not an online app per se, Genius (for the Mac, free download) helped with remembering verbs.

The web helped us find a place to live. We searched a variety of sites to find somewhere temporary in Geneva, and later, more permanent in France. In the case of the temporary accommodation, the website came with an interactive 3D tour of the apartment. Whilst this is pretty advanced I admit, all the websites we used to find a home had pictures. The difference was that we could save time and money using this process.

Hi-resolution floor plans. Houses in many European countries – alas, but excluding the UK it seems – come with detailed architectural plans, even those you just plan to rent. They locate plug sockets, light switches and so on and give precise details of every measurement both interior and exterior. Not sure if your sofa is going to fit? The plans will help tell you. These took seconds to send over email and illustrate how the communication between people in different countries is made so much easier.

Shopping. Inevitably we had to buy several things, oddments which we’d never got before or those things we needed to replace and pack. Ikea figured heavily in equipping our new place. Their website – intuitive, well-organised and with clear illustrations, it’s a good example of how we saved hours browsing online rather than visiting stores. What’s more, it provides real-time stock levels, is an example of how you can use the web to plan your deliveries or visits.

Freecycle. Even if you’re moving up the road you’ll still have a lot of stuff you’ll want to recycle. We used Freecycle online to invite people to collect some of the stuff we didn’t need or couldn’t find room for. They came in the night and collected, as if whisked away by recycling fairies, without us even knowing.

It would be no surprise to learn that one of the first things we did in Geneva was buy a 3G USB dongle to get us online (expensive but very fast).

Do you only use these things when emigrating? No, we use them now for a variety of reasons. It’s only together that they make sense as vital tools for moving country. Did we still print stuff out? Sure we did. Somewhere we’ve got a file with print outs of architectural plans, photos and the like. But this was as much as habit and security than anything: some lay untouched and unread. Is there anything I’ve missed – I expect so – even as I write I think of all the music and podcasts I’ve downloaded, some of which are about Geneva, or local news programmes and such. And booking tickets and… well, all those things we use the web for all of the time.

Now, if the BBC can get iPlayer available outside of the UK I’d pay the licence fee happily…

Edgar A. Poe

I read in The New Yorker an excellent riposte to a prevailing interpretation of Edgar A. Poe’s life as a troubled Romantic genius, on the boundaries of society, forging a new aesthetic. It brought to the boil a belief that’s been simmering away for some time: that writing fiction is less about listening to the whisper of the muse and more about being buffeted on the winds of the banal practicalities of life – which in Poe’s case, included market economics. It’s a reminder that it’s perspiration, not inspiration, that fires human endeavour.

Poe, like many other (and especially Romantic) writers, helped create and sustain the myth that he was somehow ‘otherwordly’, dominated by a mysterious muse that separated him from the rest of us. His early poem,  ‘Alone’, distills the flavour of his own brand of artistic isolation, what we might now call a PR exercise in developing his ‘brand’:

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.

In surely what is as subtly felt as the most endearing self-love, we all like to think we’ve taken Frost’s ‘road less travelled’. Yet very few of us live outside our times and its constraints, and Poe didn’t either. As the piece shows, that despite moments of relative prosperity, he was often extremely poor, living hand-to-mouth and for years desperate to make ends meet. This, more than any other factor it seems, influenced the choices he made when writing. Contrary to what we believe – or like to believe – the material concerns of his daily life influenced, or usurped, his aesthetic.

Take for example his infamous ‘Poetic Principle’, which states that a work of fiction – including epic poetry, for example – should be delivered in short enough pieces to be read at a single sitting. Poe claims this has an aesthetic foundation: a longer work cannot sustain a mood or feeling, or even an organised metre in the case of poetry, in the same way a shorter work can. However, it seems other, more prosaic and pressing reasons caused Poe to write the kinds of short works he became famous for. His novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was a failure and since he became entirely poor during the long period of its writing, he needed to make money regularly. Hence, he turned to short stories. Similarly, his longer poems ‘Al Alraaf’ and ‘Tamerlane’, were unsuccessful. His ‘Poetic Principle’, delivered shortly after their publication, helped justify what must have been a heartbreaking disappointment: if he couldn’t do it, no one could.

When I hear of such a seemingly banal explanation of what seemed previous a mysterious, wonderfully awe-inspiring life, I feel no less impressed by the quality of his work. Should I lament what I think might be a loss of innocence on my behalf? Thinking like this reminds me of that adage that tells us that when we are young we are idealists and only when we experience the indifference of the world do we turn to a more practicable realism. Expressed in coarse party-political terms, we start out socialists and end – when we’ve got a mortgage, a job and the trappings of material wealth – as Conservatives. When younger, I cherished the thought of Coleridge and Wordsworth wandering through woodland above the Lakes, discussing Shakespeare and minting a new way capturing thought and feeling on behalf of the rest of humanity, who were unloved and ignored by the muse. I even started to smoke a pipe, first near Lake Windermere, as an affectation, in sympathy with those poets I loved and thought represented the proper stuff of a poet’s life.

Does it lessen the impact and love of these works and their writers to find that they were written without such a lofty providence? I don’t think so. This is not to say that I no longer love the work of Poe, or Coleridge and Wordsworth come to that. It’s simply that the myth of their production in unnecessary for their interpretation, and my appreciation. My innocence and yours is an overrated virtue and if you’ve ever set down to write seriously, or read a book written with care and attention, then you’ll appreciate the simple hard work, imagination, discipline and organisation that underpins such a fictional work. Such very humble and human elements appear to me far more valuable than the unearned, inspiration (itself a misnomer, its origins in the ancient Greek for the ‘breath of the divinity’) for which the outmoded concept of a natural Romantic genius is the lingering and pernicious myth.

Yesterday I went out – to avoid the cleaners of the apartment, who are friendly but inevitably want the freedom to clean without me here – and had a walk along the banks of the river Arve, which runs nearby. This simple act turned out to be remarkable for three reasons.

The first is that I smoked my pipe outside with impunity, for the first time. Everyone smokes here it seems, and even when I eyed a young couple who passed me, they were no more non-plussed of me than I of them. I integrated perfectly, quickly unworried that I might be judged. Not remarkable in the scheme of things, but for me a moment I’ll remember. Similarly, I’ve yet to venture outside with my new trilby. The idea, I think, is to do so immediately on arriving in a new place, lest your neighbours think it is an afterthought, an affectation.

Second, on the other side of the street the immense trees were shedding their pollen, creating what appeared to be a snow-storm in the middle of a sunny day. I tried to photograph it, but the slightness of the pollen is all but missing in the photos. It had an unnerving quality, not least because of this fleeting and insubstantial quality, but one of wonder too, to find this unseasonable ‘weather’. It quite set my up for the third event.

As I basked in my new-found pipe-smoking freedom I was surprised to see a man – not unlike me in dress, shape and age – on a manual scooter (that is, without an engine, like a child’s plaything) being pulled along by his spotted dalmatian, attached by a scruffy rope. They moved at some speed and unselfconsciously, bold even. I whipped out my iPhone to take a picture but alas I was too late. You’ll have to trust me. I felt a unity with a woman who spied him too, and we shared a moment laughing before moving on. It was so memorable I felt an uncanny sense that I had seen this before, but I had tricked myself: instead I had misremembered the closing paragraph to Carson McCuller’s unnerving short story ‘Wunderkind’, which ends with the scene of a dog running backwards:

An hour later, Mr. Brook sat looking out of the window of his office. The trees along the quiet Westbridge street were almost bare, and the gray buildings of the college had a calm, sad look. As he idly took in the familiar scene, he noticed the Drakes’ old Airedale waddling along down the street. It was a thing he had watched a hundred times before, so what was it that struck him as strange? Then he realized with a kind of cold surprise that the old dog was running along backward. Mr. Brook watched the Airedale until he was out of sight, then resumed his work on the canons which had been turned in by the class in counterpoint.

Rather than ‘cold surprise’ I was left with the uncanny sense that these three events would somehow reappear again, in a perhaps altogether configuration, and not just in their writing here.

un pantouflard

I’m supplementing my French language learning through a combination of audio and print (ie, through television and newspapers). This occasionally culminates in exposing the locals to my awkward grasp of their beautiful language. I enjoy learning, but it can be quite formal and detached.

But it isn’t always learning how to say: I want to take their book to them tomorrow evening. Today I came across a new word which comically sums up what some accuse me of doing all day in Geneva since I have left my day job and my part-time lecturing.

The term un pantouflard means a ‘slipper wearer’ and metaphorically one who stays at home or leads an uneventful life. An uneventful life it isn’t, but I do work from home and slippers are occasionally involved.

Here’s a definition from About.com:

Definition: (inf adj) – uneventful, quiet

Nous avons passé une journée pantouflarde. – We spent an uneventful day.

un pantouflard – stay-at-home person.

Related: une pantoufle – slipper; pantoufler – (inf) to laze/lounge around at home

I understand that it’s terms like this that mean you’re really getting to grips with the intricacies of commonplace language – although I’m far from that – and a reminder that a new language will bring its idiosyncrasies and new expressions. I’m looking forward to learning more.

As well as learning French and finish my Masters degree in educational technology, I hope to work in Geneva as a freelance consultant working with the web, education, and editing and writing. So I could hardly be called un pantouflard but if some people persist, well, I’m too busy loafing to care.

I’ve been living in Geneva, Switzerland for a few weeks now and I’ve grown to love this city, despite our brief acquaintance. We drove here via the Eurotunnel, arriving after several hours excitedly chatting in the car. The spell was broken when we struggled to find our street, and had further difficulty getting into our apartment on a late Sunday evening when Geneva is sleepy – but we made it in the end and we were pleasantly surprised.

We live just off a busy street in small apartment amongst about about 10 others. Two minutes away, and I am at the river Arve, one of two rivers which cross through the city (the other is the Rhone). There are dozens of restaurants to choose from and part of our ambition has been to find our favourites; our favourite coffee, the favourite Italian, Thai, and so on. My friends tell me it’s one of the rites of passage when living in a new place.

Our apartment is perfect for us. I shall be sad to see it go, and I know that to enjoy living here will be short-lived: we stay here for a few weeks and then we move to France, in the Haute Savoie area, which I’ve written about elsewhere. In the meantime we get a taste of city life. When it all gets too much I take myself to the chair by the window, have a beer and reflect, which is where I am right now as I write. When you move home and country, there’s a lot to think about.

My chair by the window

It’s been an amazingly busy, all-but overwhelming few weeks. Now as I am quietly ensconced in the chair by the window, I think back to what we did on our first few days here. Mostly, we wandered about the city, still in the honeymoon period before the inevitable humdrum tasks began. The weather was fine, and I caught the sun. At first we felt cheated – the wind had kept quiet the giant water jet that is the star of Geneva’s lakeside – but eventually we were rewarded with the spectacle of hundreds of tonnes of water shooting high into the air. It’s pointless (which in this rich country might be the point) but it’s hard not to find it impressive. Like the mountains that surround the capital of French Switzerland, you can see the Jet d’eau from miles around.

Jet d'eau from the Rive droit. The alps are in the background.

When I’d been to Paris I loved the idea of the rive gauche and the rive droit – they seemed so much evocative than their English language equivalents – and so taking a long stroll down the rive gauche here in Geneva was a real highlight. The city is split about the lake, and the rive droit is known mostly for the many international organisations that have offices here. The rive gauche, with the artisan and longtime independent area of Carouge, feels more cultured if less bohemian than its Parisian counterpart on the left-bank. But the strongly multi-cultural area of the Paquis is on the right bank, so there’s less of a clear divide between the two sides in terms of which has dibs on being the arty side. Remarkably, for a lake, Lake Geneva (Lac Leman) has its own beach – albeit a very modest one – and the the parks by the lakeside of the rive gauche are especially lovely, too.

The Parc des eaux-vives, on Lac Leman's rive gauche

Spending time in the chair I’ve  grappled with trying to summarise the flavour of city. I can’t hope to do it of course and would never really want to distill and classify such a various place. But I lean towards a piece of homespun philosophy that tells me this: it’s a city full of contrasts. For example, on the one hand we live near Plain Palais, which has at its centre a large scruffy patch of ground which normally houses funfairs or the like. At the moment it’s more or less empty, haunted only by drinkers on park benches, lonely dog walkers or smokers. It’s got what you might generously call ‘atmosphere’ despite this; and surrounding it are many of the best – and least expensive – bars and restaurants around, befitting of its status as a student centre.

I like it for very different reasons than Carouge, which lies over the block and could hardly be different. Carouge is one of Geneva’s most affluent areas (which is saying something in an already affluent city) and is full of one-off craft shops, narrow and quiet streets, and old-fashioned charm. It has a square of its own, which is lined with wine bars and eateries. It’s altogether more genteel, untouched on the whole by the kinds of things that make the Plain Palais appear less well kept, but no less well loved.

Parc des Bastions

What is striking is that the identity of one area does not merge imperceptibly into the other, as you imagine it might after decades of cross-pollination and entanglement. Rather, a geographical boundary – in this case, a road, the river Arve, a block of houses – sharply divides one area and its concomitant atmosphere from another. You can almost feel it as you cross from one area to another.

And if I were to extend my analogy further, I’d say this may represent the cultural identity of Switzerland on the whole. It is not the melting pot of America, where identities merge under the flag, but here cultures observe and retain their own sense of self within the great many different peoples that pass through this crossroads at the centre of Europe. The four languages of Switzerland – French, German, Italian and Romansh – reflect this restraint to some extent. This doesn’t mean that its people don’t get on – it’s one of the most peaceful places you can imagine, held together by a people-centred democracy. What’s more, I don’t know if my idea holds water – it’s a theory unsubstantiated by further observation as yet – but I think there’s a germ of something in it.

To some extent where we live lies in the midst of all this. The Rue de Carouge, which I can see as I write, is a busy main street with restaurants, bars and stores below the ubiquitous and unremarkable apartment buildings. If I walk north towards the lakeside, I’ll find the quiet haven of Parc des Bastions and the granduer of the Place Neuve, with its national theatre and statues. It’s a great place to immerse myself into the local ways of living. I’m learning French, too, slowly.

I can say nothing more revealing and no less banal than Geneva is a mix of the great and prosaic, the humdrum and the magnificent, of grandeur and grime, of sardine-packed apartments and wide open spaces. And if all these photos here look like postcards rather than realistic documentaries of city life, that’s because right now that is how it feels – like a wonderful escape. The grit and grime can come later. But until I can find nothing more profound to catch this city, then it’s back to the chair by the window…

Leaving Milton Keynes was tough but not just because of our emotional ties and the people we were leaving behind. Packing up and moving a house is hugely disruptive as you’ll know, despite us having the services of a removal firm to take it all away. Unlike many movers, we were spared ushering it all back into a new house several hours later. That time will come, but for now most of our worldly possessions are being kept in a warehouse somewhere for when we’re ready for them.

The first of many: boxes accumulate in the kitchen

When you leave, even the most banal moment, object or place takes on monumental significance – at least for a sentimental old fool like me. Playing tennis in the local club, smoking my pipe in the garden for the last time, turning the key in the door and joking ‘I’m home!’; these things and those we do most days were the source of sadness for me before leaving, since I doubted I would do them again there, or in quite the same way. More than once I thought something silly like: ‘This is the final time I’ll come down these stairs’ or ‘How odd that I won’t be walking this path again, the path I’ve taken unthinkingly so many times!’ It was saying goodbye to the banal, the everyday ritual and place that pricked the eyes and brought me up short: would it ever be the same again?

The excitement of doing these things, and others that were impossible or very difficult, in a new country, a new home, tempered the sadness and it’s true that for every moment of looking back there is one of looking forward. That would characterize the experience of leaving; an ambivalent one, swinging pendulum-like between excitement and concern, expectation and nostalgia, and security and challenge.

And so the more we said goodbye, the more we said hello. Buying a one-way ticket gave me a frisson of excitement; as did closing the car boot door on our possessions, a distillation of what we thought was essential to live and work in a new country. Later, when we had spent a week in Geneva, Jennie would gently rebuke me for bringing only a handful of underpants at the expense of including the Complete Works of Shakespeare and Wisden’s Cricketing Almanack.

We left not because we didn’t like Milton Keynes, or Buckinghamshire, or England come to that. We left because we felt that we had, at least for now, and for us only, exhausted their possibilities. That is – there is nothing wrong with any of those places, save all those things we love and hate about them. I love them all. But that it was simply time to taste a new life, to embrace a new culture, to shake us awake from our too-comfortable life and see what it was like to live elsewhere, fresh and new, with all the challenges, problems, differences, energy and hope as anywhere else; but new to us and we new to it.