Chataigne's Incredible Web Page !

I have a diary that you may read on nekoweb, but I decided to open a "that's life", kinda lighter diary here too. My guess is you'll soon find the same texts on each other, probably not in the same form. Who knows ? It's not like if my fan club was big enough.

Sunday 27 September, 2026 :

There's one secret I've kept for far too long. Some might say, "oh, it's not a big deal!" — but I think it's worth telling. Judge for yourself.

For context: more than ten years ago, I decided I should go to the Courts, just to sit in on hearings. It's the kind of thing anyone can do in France — you walk up to the courthouse, go through a few security checks, and you're in! You don't even need to show ID. From there, you can wander freely almost anywhere, unless you cross a "PROHIBITED" sign — otherwise, you can walk into a courtroom, take a seat, and watch the proceedings unfold.

Does that sound intimidating? At first, it was for me — enough that I didn't dare go alone. I told my best friend about it, the one who lives in Belgium (they speak French there too, which helped). I've written about her before. In the end, she loved it so much that we kept going back, again, and again, and again. I wasn't sure it was such a great idea, since we'd only met a little while before, and uh... let's be honest: who willingly walks into a courthouse if they're not sure nothing's going to happen to them? You get the idea.

On top of that, the Parisian courts we used to visit were housed, back then, in the Palais de la Cité — a magnificent stone building where you feel absolutely tiny. Its stones were laid between the Middle Ages and the end of the 19th century, and over time it served every imaginable purpose, from royal palace to countless kinds of jurisdictions, some of which sound almost exotic to us now, in 2026. I'll let you imagine: how many tragedies played out there? How many lives were changed forever within those walls?

On a quiet winter afternoon, in the dim natural light, we started hearing a long, loud, droning "WOOOOOOH!" Wait — what do you mean, "it was just the wind"? Could wind really have slammed those heavy doors like that? Oh, well, actually, yes, but um... never mind, and uh... just trust me on this one! Everyone knows there's a Phantom of the Opera — why not a Phantom of the Courthouse?

That was back in 2014. By 2018, another kind of crime took place: a whole batch of jurisdictions got moved to a different building — a stair-shaped skyscraper. Don't get me wrong: as ugly as it is outside, it's convenient and genuinely pleasant INSIDE. But somewhere along the way, they accidentally packed the Ghost into the moving boxes.

Now, the Ghost desperately tries to communicate with us:

• He makes the lights in certain rooms flicker on and off at night, making the courthouse blink in Morse code!
• He leaves us messages at the coffee machine!
• And he even once tried sending us a message by compulsively opening and closing the elevator doors. That was NOT a glitch, believe me!

Alas, we don't have a box big enough to bring him back to his old courthouse. Do you think a backpack might do the trick?

Maybe you should check for yourself whether there are other ghosts haunting your local courts. At worst, you'll get to witness some interesting stories at the hearings...

Sunday 5 July, 2026 :

Bernadette, my colleague, retired last week. She finished her long career of early morning starts at the respectable age of 64.

When she told me the news, several times ago now, I thought: "That's wonderful! She'll finally be able to rest a little." I met her for the first time this school year, but the few months we spent together were enough to make me understand just how much she deserves it. She's someone you take a few days to get to know, but with whom you quickly feel at ease. She was always calm, she knew how to be compassionate without being maudlin, and she carried her voice on the phone with the confidence of many years' experience. Of course, she sometimes struggled, had days when her spirits were low, but she always managed to find something to laugh about before the day was out.

She loves reading, classics especially, and is far more cultured than the dismissive image of secretaries tells: after the lunch break, at the same time every day, I would hear her put on classical music, and simply enjoy it. Sometimes it was Chopin, sometimes Ravel... Yesterday, we shared a meal, all together, at my workplace. It was lovely, full of good cheer, and the day passed without a hitch, with beautiful sunshine and just the right amount of warmth. We said our goodbyes, and I handed her my phone number, to which she might one day send a text.

Then, the morning after, I realized: she wasn't there. She hadn't come in. Her little vase and its dried-out rose were gone, along with her little pots of sand, which colleagues offered her to send her off on holiday too. Her tear-off calendar was still on June 30th, I flipped it to July 1st. I keep doing that, for the memory of it. It isn't a farewell, thankfully, but it's one of the rare glimmers of humanity I've come across in my career. I hope to see her again, maybe at the Christmas meal, over a drink... But it won't be quite the same.