Rest Day: Picnic with Professor Freud

It is the second rest day of the Tour. Team Philosophe, Team Bumptious, Belle et Bonne, Marie and Professor Freud have spread their picnic in a field of flowers outside Montpellier. All except Farky have already tossed down a few glasses of Blanquette de Limoux. Professor Freud is explaining the psychology of Yukio Mishima to anyone who cares to listen.

Professor Freud: Of course, it was all because his grandmother, a woman prone to morbid and violent outbursts, took him away from his family at a very young age, kept him out of the sunlight and only allowed him to play with his girl cousins and their dolls.

Belle et Bonne: You don't say! Here Professor, have a pebradou.

Professor Freud: Thank you my dear. What is this again? A stuffed bun?

Marie: No that's not the stuffed bun. That comes later. This is an aperitif cake. Have a splash more of Blanquette to go with it.

Le Bon David: I'll have more too, Marie. It's a jolly good drop.

Sweezus: This is brilliant! What a day! What a picnic! What's this yellow meat?

Farky: I already asked. It's Duck a la Limoux. Duck with saffron and garlic. Yucky duck.

Sweezus: But I thought you liked duck. Is it the garlic? You can eat a mint afterwards.

Gustave: Yes Farky, a mint will get rid of garlic breath.

Gaius: Yes it will, it's been a tried and true method since Roman times.

Farky: I know you humans think so, but it doesn't work for dogs. In fact, let me tell you something, it doesn't work that well for humans either....

Professor Freud: ....and then, when he went back to live with his family, his father, a strict military disciplinarian, used to hold him up to speeding trains, and raid his room to search for poetry. A classic case.....

Violetta: A classic case of what, Professor?

Professor Freud: Of someone who becomes fascinated by death of course.

Violetta: Who are we talking about?

The VeloDrone: Molly is it? The dachshund. May I try that Cremant, Belle dear?

Le Bon David: Me too, while you've got the bottle there, Belle.

Belle et Bonne: Molly isn't fascinated by death. She just got confused by the authorial voice.

Farky: Is that what it was? Did you and Marie think the same?

Violetta: The same as what?

Farky: That the text was written by a madman.

Violetta: I have to read this book.

Marie: We thought that it would have been best not to know anything at all about the author, either before or after reading it.

Violetta: Well, thank you Professor.

Professor Freud: What have I done? And when are we having this stuffed bun?

NanoString Bicycle

People! Remember me? It is I, Salvador Dali. The only difference between myself and a madman is: I am not mad. Ah yes, you remember me now!

It was I who painted the fourth dimension, in the shape of eight cubes. It was I who depicted the bending of light in the form of a spoon. Science, my friends, follows Dali, and Dali follows no one at all.

Surrealism may be dead. But Dali is not dead. Dali moves with the times. Dali moves before the times. The times follow Dali.

Enter my space. It is dark. What have we here? In a dark interactive tunnel you find a brilliant piece of work, by Dali. It is his new NanoString bicycle. The bicycle is blue and green and violet. These colours symbolise.....NOTHING!!! they are merely the colours Dali has chosen today. Symbolism is dead, but things must have a colour.

The NanoString bicycle is made of nano particles. They are miniscule. They are absorbed immediately into your skin. The bicycle becomes a part of you and you become the bicycle. You pedal down the dark tunnel, towards a screen at the end. You see your self riding towards you, and you are ALARMED! Momentarily. But you have forgotten your new nano qualities. You ride straight through the screen.

Crash! A million stars! Receding, receding....... You ride through dark matter, and dark energy sucks hungrily at your pedals....... you are going to vanish inside a BLACK HOLE. PANIC!!! But no. Here is the beauty and inventiveness of Dali's bicycle. The bicycle has remained attached to the tunnel by a series of nano strings, blue and green and violet. Yes! They did symbolise something afer all. They draw you back from certain extinction.The beautiful strings.

I, Dali, invented this.