Catching Up - Death, Life, Birth & Lyon

Life has been especially busy for the last few months and intended posts just fell by the wayside. Time to catch up. Within days of my last posting I received extraordinary news. Seven years ago I was told that one of my best friends from school was dead - late in February I was told that a mistake had been made and that he was alive and well in Melbourne. "H" was the only old friend missing from my group of loved and trusted buddies and it was a glorious moment to know that he was still with us. His wife was much relieved as well! The shock was palpable but the joy far greater. We have been doing some pretty serious catching up since then.

In March my family grew - another joyous occasion as I became a grandfather again (far too young for that really). In fact, there is something rejuvenating about being "Pappou", which is the Greek version of grampa. Recently, several Greek friends who I hadn't seen for a year all commented, independently, on how much younger I looked. How refreshing. here are my two elixirs...

April's high note was a very rare trip abroad to work. I can't remember when it last happened - if indeed it did. EuroNews flew me to Lyon to record promos for their new "habillage" - that's the new relaunch design. While I can't say anything good about the Campanile Hotel I stayed in, I thoroughly enjoyed the recording session. If I have a second language it is French and it was comforting to find that my grasp of the language, once almost fluent, had not deserted me. Although voicing in English much of the direction and discussion was conducted in French. My thanks to Constantino and Grazia de Miguel at Prime Voices, my agents in that neck of the woods, for the gig. Here is the team in the studio... from the left... Yves Rotacher - aka Popy - the sound engineer and one of the nicest and best I have worked with, the lovely and charming Laurence Jallinaud - Chief of audio mix, myself, and the immensely agreeable Nial O'Reilly - Head of English Language for EuroNews.

I had time after the session to dash into Lyon on an extremely good bus service to do some sight seeing. I covered four and a half miles in less than three hours and managed a ride on a funiculaire. I saw many of the more interesting elements of this old French city before settling down to a rather good early supper at Europe's oldest restaurant, Brasserie St Georges. An astonishing restaurant which seats over 400 diners and which filled up as I sat there - groups of two to eight people appearing every two minutes or so...

That's it for this catch up. More about my holiday to Rhodes and Athens and recent work soon.