A book for Spy Wednesday

Today is Holy Wednesday, which is also called Spy Wednesday. I prefer to call it Spy Wednesday, because it's a much cooler name. And every Spy Wednesday, I try to commemorate by blogging something espionage related. This year, I thought that I would start reading a spy thriller to mark the date. So I bought William Boyd's Gabriel's Moon at some point last year, I'm not even sure where. I think I might give it a go today, as I am between books. Okay, not between books, but between novels, most definitely. And Spy Wednesday is a good excuse as any to read a spy novel.

Memento Mori from Pompeii

As you may know, today is is Ash Wednesday today, the beginning of Lent. To mark the day, I have decided to share one very famous Memento Mori, from Pompeii. I took the picture in one of my childhood books about Greek and Roman mythology. This image has always fascinated me. It is an allegory of the transient nature of life. The skull represents death, there is the wheel of fortune, the soul is represented by the butterfly, etc. You can find more details about the moseic here. In the end, I think it's a cool image to encourage people to make the most of their life.

Ash Wednesday 2025

 For those who don't know, it is Ash Wednesday today, the beginning of Lent. Back when I was a good little Catholic boy, it was a big deal. Now, it just means that Easter is slowly getting closer, yet is so very far away. I like waiting for holidays and celebrations, waiting for them is part of the fun, sometimes more fun than the actual day. So I kind of like Ash Wednesday just for that. But this year, I feel like Ash Wednesday is kind of dreary and gloomy, even more than when I was a young Catholic boy and it was meant to be a dark day, feeling as grey as ashes. Because it's been difficult at my job and Wednesday is often the worst day in my week.

Question existentielle (393)

 Nous sommes le mercredi des Cendres aujourd'hui. Dans pas si longtemps, mais le temps pour s'y rendre sera long, ce sera Pâques. Mais bon, je vais poser une question existentielle:

-Que représente le mercredi des Cendres pour vous? 

J'ai souvent blogué sur le sujet, mais je suis curieux de vos réponses.

Goldfinger for Spy Wednesday

 Today is Holy Wednesday, also called, more dramatically... Spy Wednesday. I prefer to call it the latter. It has nothing to do with real spies or spy fiction, however I take this opportunity to mention that a few days ago, last Saturday, was the 65th anniversary of the publication of Goldfinger. I learned about it on the official Facebook page of Ian Fleming. To celebrate its publication, they are selling a couple of cool fancy stuff, go check it out. I just thought the novel is a fitting read for Spy Wednesday. The film would make a great watch too, come to think of it, especially if you are not into Biblical things or fluffy bunny stuff. Butgive the novel a try.

La Saint-Valentin le Mercredi des cendres

 Bon, je me prends un peu d'avance cette année, mais bon, une chose m'a frappée il y a quelques jours quand je m'en suis rendu compte: la Saint-valentin tombe pile poil sur le Mercredi des cendres cette année. Quand j'étais un bon petit catholique, ça aurait créé la source d'un dilemne cornélien: anger ou pas du chocolat? Maintenant, plus vraiment, mais je trouve que ça indique que Pâques arrive trop tôt cette année.

Odin, In Memoriam

My long time readers remember Odin the one-eyed black cat who we used to have. He was the best, sweetest cat we ever met. He died ten years ago today. You cna read his eulogy here. We miss him to this day. I had to commemorate his tragic passing.

Post-Halloween Blues

Here we are again, here we go again. Halloween is over already. It goes way too quickly. And sorry for the clichés. And it is on a Wednesday on top of that, so the month starts right in the middle of a week, when I am at my most exhausted, generally. I have made my peace with November, a month I used to dislike, partially because it is still autumn. And for other reasons, which I mentioned before and will blog about soon enough. So now I kind of like November. Except, of course, today. On the first of November, I have the post-Halloween blues, no matter what. I think I have to process that there is a year to go until my favourite holiday is back again.

A Book for Spy Wednesday

I don't know for you, but I am getting quite impatient about Easter. And we are "only" Holy Wednesday. Which, as I had mentioned back in 2017, is also called Spy Wednesday. So I thought it would be fitting to give the followers of this blog one reading suggestion for today. As you know, I tend to choose the books I read according to the time of year: horror during autumn leading to Halloween, something wintery for Christmas, some summery for summertime, etc. And mostly crime fiction all year round, to be honest. As I'm not the religious type, I don't often go for Biblical stories, even for Easter. But anyway, recently I read some spy thriller and what would be more fitting than spy fiction on Spy Wednesday? So I recommend that you give Six Days of the Condor, James Grady's debut novel, a go. It was of course adapted (and condensed) into Three Days of the Condor to the cinema, but there are enough differences between the source material and the film to make it enjoyable for those who have only seen the movie. Plus there is on the edition I have the novella/novelette Condor.net which is a sequel/remake of the story by the author himself. But anyway, while the film is set around Christmastime, the novel is set around this time of year, so all the more reasons to read this now.

Coquille St-Jacques

Nous sommes le Mercredi des cendres, premier jour du Carême. Ce qui veut dire, aussi, que Pâques s'en vient, alors il ne faut pas trop s'en faire avec cette fête austère. Mais dans la tradition catholique, ça veut dire aussi maîgre-jeune: renoncer à la viande pendant quarante jours. Pas un gros sacrifice pour moi qui suis marié à une végétarienne.Il se trouve aussi que j'aime le poisson et les fruits de mer, alors même si je ne mangeais plus de viande, je n'en souffrirais pas trop. C'est une excuse comme une autre, mais parlant de produits de la mer, mon père a fait des coquilles Saint-Jacques récemment et m'a envoyé une photo. J'ai toujours adoré les coquilles Saint-Jacques, alors rien que pour le plaisir, je partage cette photo.

Mercredi des cendres

Nous sommes le Mercredi des cendres, premier jour du Carême. Rien à dire cette année sur cette fête austère, j'ai blogué souvent là dessus et sur mon passé catholique qui faisait que je la trouvais donc bien importante. Je n'ai rien à dire, donc, sauf peut-être une chose: aussi austère soit-elle, ça veut quand même dire que Pâques s'en vient, tranquillement pas vite. Et rien que pour ça, le Mercredi des cendres mérite d'être souligné un peu.

Mercredi: le pire et le meilleur

Je déteste le mercredi lorsqu'il commence. C'est le milieu de la semaine, c'est là où la journée est à son plus pénible, mais une fois le mercredi terminé, on a plus de la moitié de la semaine passée. Je n'ai jamais beauoup aimé le mercredi, sauf peut-être durant mes années de cégep. Et au bacc aussi, parfois, à bien y penser: durant la première session de ma troisième année de bacc, je terminais la semaine le mercredi (!) avec trois cours (je crois), des cours qui m'intéressaient en plus et c'était le bonheur. C'est sans doute la dernière époque de ma vie où j'aimais vraiment le mercredi. Maintenant, avec un travail que je commence sérieusement à détester, je trouve que le mercredi est un long, long, long calvaire. Au moins, lorsqu'il se termine, j'ai l'impression (parfois à tort) que le pire de la semaine est passé.

Ash Wednesday: two observations

It is Ash Wednesday today, the beginning of Lent. This is something I blogged about often before, yearly or nearly yearly in fact, mostly about my experience of it when I was growing up as a then Catholic boy, today I just want to make two ether mundane observations on the subject:

-Ash Wednesday means that Easter is getting closer.
-Ash Wednesday also means that Easter is still very far away.

Not sure if it means I am a fatalist, or if I see the glass as both half-full and half-empty, but there you go.

Hump Day

The word of the day today/tonight (haven't done that in a while) is hump day. Which is a popular term for Wednesday, being the middle of the week. Apparently, it can be written humpday, hump day or Hump Day, among other spellings. I am not sure which one I prefer. Wednesday is maybe the worst day of the week for me, where I feel the most tired at work and the weekend seems far, far, far away. This is the case in the morning at least. And until the day ends, time is so very long and things go very slow. Hump Day is maybe just a way to give a positive spin to Wednesday, but it is sitll Wednesday, and I can only call it Hump Day when it is finally over.

La Saint-Valentin un Mercredi des cendres

Suis-je le seul à ne pas reconnaître l'ironie de la situation? On devrait faire maigre jeûne et youpelai, c'est la Saint-Valentin. Fête que je n'ai jamais aimée, mais faut passer par là. Alors comme à chaque année, j'achète ben, ben du chocolat dans une boîte rouge pour ma femme. Pas de Marks&Spencer comme c'était le cas pour ces chocolats, mais quand même assez de chocolats pour dire que le maigre jeûne, on l'a loin dans cette famille.

Les moitiés de mois et de semaines

Petite lapalissade pour commencer: hier c'était mercredi, le milieu de la semaine donc, c'était aussi le 15 novembre, donc le milieu du mois. Nous sommes par conséquent dans la deuxième moitié de novembre, ça n'a pas d'allure comme ça passe vite. J'apprends tant bien que mal à aimer novembre, peut-être que ça commence à faire son effet si j'ai l'impression que le temps passe vite. Pour ce qui de mercredi, ça poisse tout le temps et je n'arriverai jamais à aimer, pas avant que vienne le soir en tout cas. Mais j'ai trouvé que c'était un jour intéressant pour faire tomber un milieu de mois. Et lapalissade est notre mot du jour.

Spy Wednesday

Easter cannot come too early and the closer it is, the longer the wait gets. if not Easter, then at least the Easter holidays. And today/tonight we are still Holy Wednesday. Also called Spy Wednesday as, according to Christian liturgy, it is today that Judas Iscariot conspired with the Sanhedrin to betray Jesus. In other words, he became a mole, a double agent, a snitch, an undercover, a spy. I really like the name Spy Wednesday, it sounds dark and mysterious with a hint of menace. And the Godless heathen that I am has a confession to make here: I have always been fascinated by Judas and his place in the Biblical narrative. As far as I am concerned, he is the most interesting character of the Bible, an ambiguous figure whose motivations are a subject of debates and deep analysis. Myths and legends have plenty of traitors, but few are as interesting as Judas. Anyway, happy Spy Wednesday.

The Return of the Wednesday Warrior

I was really anxious after last week to go to my Krav Maga course tonight, as there will soon be a two weeks break. So I managed to get there tonight, if a few minutes late (but I was not the latest, which I found quite funny). And it was like I had never missed a class, or it felt like it anyway. It was a bit more difficult doing push ups at the end, I think I was out of shape (I mean more than how I usually am), but I could still throw a few good punches and did pretty well with all the exercises. The class lasted two hours this time, which is exactly what I needed, after the disappointment of last week. Even the pain felt good. It was nice spending energy like this anyway, learning something useful at the same time. Okay, so I am not exactly the great Israeli army close combat expert, but I am turning into a decent Wednesday Warrior.

The Art of Contact Combat

As you may have noticed, I did not blog yesterday. After my class of Krav Maga, I was too exhausted and my body was hurting like hell. I wanted to blog, but simply lacked energy. It might be the case for most of my Wednesdays now. The same happened with my acting classes back in 2010-2011. But hey, I have things to blog about afterwards.

So yes, anyway, about the training itself. I am learning a lot, sometimes the hard way: as I hesitated between two movements when I was answering to a knife attack, my instructors made me do push-ups. Or, as he calls it, press-ups. We cannot chit chat during warmups, or push-ups. Basically, mistakes we cannot make are punished with push-ups. Not that I to do many push-ups, in fact only when I stopped during exercise (I am a committed student), but it is something still foreign to me, something akin to a military mentality. Krav Maga is not so much about learning perfectly a movement or a technique but as integrating reflexes and instincts. To do what feels natural. Krav Maga truly is a martial art. There is a certain elegance in it.

What I am also gaining is energy, stamina and strength. My instructor said that when I started (and that was a month ago) I could barely do ten sit-ups, and badly. Now I do 25 easily. And that was my fifth lesson. I even had enough energy left to do a bit of extra training, when I exercised with fellow beginners the lessons we learned. basically, the knife attack. One takes a fake knife, threatens the other, using verbal abuse as well just to make it realistic (and because it's kind of fun), the other defend himself/herself and does the counter-attack. We were four there, two guys, two girls. One is a professional dancer working in London (no, not that kind of dancer, she does tango and things like that), the other a barmaid at a local pub (, the guy I don't know exactly. I have to say, threatening a woman with a knife, even a fake and harmless one, and saying something nasty, even as part of training, made me slightly uncomfortable. So she asked: "So you want to rape me or something?" and I answered: "Well yes, but go easy on me, it is my first time." My three fellows burst out laughing. So yes, for a few minutes, the extra training was pretty relaxed. I think that however silly the line was, it deserves to be a great unknown line. My first about a martial art.

Krav Maga Time

So I am back from my Krav Maga class. This time (exceptionally?), and don't ask me why, but it lasted two hours. And, while I am in moderate pain now, I didn't see the time. I didn't even feel the hunger until I got home. I thought I would find the class tonight very long, because I had a tiresome day at work and had slept badly the night before. I couldn't believe that I could go through an hour, let alone two. I always go in with a bit of anxiety, as if I wonder if I will survive the class. Then it goes like a charm (well, with a few bruises and a bit of pain). It really makes me look forward to Wednesdays. It is no longer the day in the week I dread the most.

So anyway, I must be doing something right, as the instructor told me that I did very good last week and I have "started to think". It seems that I am starting to trust my instincts more. I know I am also gaining strength and stamina. That I can actually feel in my body. With the pain. At 38, that is a strange feeling. Speaking of age, I also have to mention that yesterday was the birthday of Imi Lichtenfeld, the founder of Krav Maga. And I will conclude this post mentioning the picture accompanying it. It is a picture of the banner that made me discover that they were giving classes of the Israeli martial art here. I mentioned it in my first post on the subject. I took the photo to remind myself to contact the organization. Then I thought it would make a great banner for this very post. Funny how, in an age of internet and social medias, a good old fashioned advertisement banner can make you discover something.