...come rain, come shine

...this blogger is currently reporting on global weather...

Mom, here is how you can listen in:

- go to FRANCE 24
- click on LIVE FEED (middle of page)
- the weather report follows the news bulletins at 10 past and 40 past every hour.

Wishing you sunshine, wherever you are :-P


PS: Yes, I do realise that directing people to a news site is a lame excuse for a post, but it'll have to do for now. Besides, France 24 is under threat from Sarko, so it could do with a bit of publicity! (Admittedly, a teeny, tiny bit is all this blog can manage)

FREE TIP: If you hear an Australian, Canadian or American accent on the weather... it ain't me you're hearing!

Barbados, BarBAAAYdos

Undoubtedly, there are advantages to growing up in a tri-lingual environment. I am not going to tell you otherwise. But it doesn’t come without it’s embarrassing moments - it isn’t all ‘I’m-cool-with-my-mix-of-germanic-languages’ sailing!
As it happens, I seem to have heard or read a lot of words in German first, and first impressions last - or so they say. And this has had blush-inducing consequences for me, especially lately, during my weather bulletins for France 24...

As a weatherhead, I have come home to have The Boyfriend point out: ”In English, we don’t say ‘moss cow’"
But the Americans do! So, I'll just be American when I announce Moscow's weather. I have also been caught out saying INclement weather. Now I know it’s inCLEment weather and I write it out phonetically in my bulletins, lest I get confused at the recording stage.

Suddenly, thanks to French, I am also having trouble with Montreal... and often have to re-record the name for my bulletins. Is it “MOhreAhl” or MoNTreeawwl’ or “MoNTreeeAhl”?? I’m still not sure.

Then there was the recent incident when I was telling a friend that The Boyfriend was in the Caribbean and flew via ‘AntiGUa’. My friend was too kind to correct me, so I went around telling everyone about AntiGUa. I blushed a hot pink 24 hours later when The Boyfriend returned from ‘AntEEga’ and I went:” What, so it’s not pronounce AntiGUa?” What is up with the darn island names??

Take Barbados as another example....lovely island - I don’t doubt it - but it’s been the bane of my linguistic existence for....oh, roughly 9 years now. That was how long ago I was playing Trivial Pursuit with some friends in South Africa. As it was the answer to my team’s question, I hollered Bar-baa-DOSSSS! Greeted with noisy, grunting laughter, I obviously didn’t get the joke until someone gave me a pointed lesson in Bar-BAAAY-dos pronunciation. My protests, that I was merely pronouncing it the German way, fell on deaf ears - people who are ROLFL* don’t hear so well. And they have NEVER let me forget it.

PS Luckily for China, the French and Germans call the capital Peking, so at least my pronunciation of Beijing will remain unpolluted!

ROTFL* = rolling on the floor laughing (lest you be not enough of a geek to know)

Yip, it's happening!

Just as I predicted... there are thunderstorms in Paris. Yee-ha!
The Play is over and I am back in gay Paris, on global weather duty until Monday morning (French time).
If you want to hear my infinite weather-wisdom, log on to France 24, and click on 'live feed'. My bulletins are broadcast in English every 30 minutes at 11 and 43 minutes past the hour.

It ain't art, but it saves you the effort of looking out the window to decide what to wear.


[PS If you're a mac user, you can only see France 24 streaming in Firefox.]