Geneva

There’s work to be done but with my emails not sending (I have to cut and paste everything to gmail) and children flitting about I just can’t seem to find any focus so I’m hoping that the bare minimum will get me by until I get to New York.  Today is our last day in Romenay so I think we’ll find another little chateau to visit even though the weather is a bit iffy. 

Yesterday we made the trek across to Geneva about 2 hours away and I must say that I couldn’t have done it without Geoffrey.  Not that a trip to Geneva is a particularly arduous one from here but we had to find a specific apartment in the suburbs of Geneva - without a map or a Sat. Nav… and it was raining very heavily.  The place was technically in France and we were planning to avoid going into Switzerland but of course that didn’t happen.  So before we knew it we’d crossed the border into Switzerland without passports (they were in the drawer here at home - oops) and without the requisite Swiss autoroute sticker.  Flagrant law breakers we are!  Thankfully it all went without incident but there’s that awful moment when you think that you might be required to explain yourself to Swiss authorities and that’s not really my favourite thing. 

The mission was for me to go and interview Tom Shakespeare for my film. So we had directions to the area where Tom lives but no directions to his actual home.  We had the address but he wasn’t answering his phone, so after a couple of wrong turns and a scenic tour of Geneva with me driving and Geoffrey navigating we somewhat miraculously found the area and then quickly found ourselves back in the countryside.  Geoffrey had noticed a local area map back on the side of the road so we went back to that and found the address – ingenious, that’s what those maps are for.

Once at the apartment building I had trouble locating that actual apartment but eventually knocked on the correct door about 45 minutes late – I hate that but it just happens when you’re in unfamiliar territory and I’ve almost stopped stressing about it.

Tom is a breeze to interview as he’s an experienced speaker and seems comfortable in the spotlight but he does not do small talk.  I like to think I’m quite good at small talk but setting up involved some polite responses to my chat and quite a few long silences.  To be fair he was very patient with my setting up (which is pretty efficient now) and in interview he was eloquent and direct and gave good answers without wasting time or tape.  I feel less concerned about our last meeting now (see my last blog entry) as I think he just has a very direct, no frills way of relating to people.  He did make me a very delicious cup of tea too, and I was rather pleased with the way the lighting turned out.

Tom is currently working at the World Health Organisation helping to write their statement on disability and also working to mainstreaming disability into all aspects of WHO – such as disaster response which I thought sounded like a really interesting – if somewhat daunting job.

With Tom’s interview in the can it was time the thank Geoffrey and the kids for coming with me as there wasn’t really anything in it for them apart from some spectacular scenery around Geneva.  I just know that if I’d tried to do the trip on my own I would have got hopelessly lost, overwhelmed by the rain and just really hated it so it was really really nice to have them along for the ride.

We managed quite easily to do the trip home without going back into Switzerland as the road outside Tom’s place lead in the right direction.  One the way home we stopped at La Bresse – a tacky French autoroute restaurant that had swans and ducks on a pond out the front.  The food was fast and the kids loved it – I won’t say too much about my dish but I was less hungry afterwards and didn’t feel sick (which is more than I can say about the night before).

Enough for now – kids rioting in the disco van.  Time to get out and about.

peak hour in Geneva

Kids take weird pictures and Curtis took this one at Le Lion D'Or - local restaurant