Update on Paris Visa

Well, it took all day, a lot of running around, six hours of waiting in queues, a healthy dose of anxiety and some dispair, but I got the visa to go to Paris, so it's all sorted.

I went to town yesterday to apply and collect it and I stupidly thought it wouldn't take long and maybe I'd get to do some shopping on Oxford Street or something, but no, it took all day and I caught a commuter train home. The train in Britain is lovely, a much more comfortable way to commute than the metro. And as it's above ground and it's Britain, there are plenty of beautiful things to watch go by. The English countryside is indescribably beautiful right now with the frost and the mist. There is a bridge over the Cam that Matt and I cycle on every time we go to city centre and every time I've gone over it these last two weeks, I've had to slow down and look left and right up and down the river, it is just fantastically beautiful with the old colleges and the Backs shrouded in mist on either side. It's the kind of beauty you experience when you're at the top of a mountain or on an empty white beach with deep blue water, you can't describe it and you can't photograph it, you can only experience it at the moment and try to keep the memory with you. The human eye is extraordinary in the way it can collect stimuli and synthesize it into something a camera can never capture. It makes you think about the potential of the world and your own.