Le Poisson d’Avril

A photo of a clownfish in an aquarium. The French refer to an April Fool as 'un poisson d'Avril', which translates as an April Fish.

Something I learned back in secondary school was that the French call an April Fool’s joke ‘un poisson d’Avril’, which literally translates as ‘an April fish’. No April Fool’s Day jokes from me today though.

We’re part way though the Easter holidays here, with our ten-year-old having broken up from school last Friday. It would appear that not all schools are off this week, however; I had an email from Eureka about how they are running their Easter holiday activities over three weeks. Indeed, we would have loved to go to see Olaf Falafel’s Stupidest Super Stupid Show in Leeds on the 14th, but our ten-year-old will be back at school by then.

Christine is working on Good Friday, and so I’ll probably end up taking our ten-year-old to see the new Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Unless the weather ends up being especially good, and we end up doing something outdoors. We’ll then be spending the rest of the Easter weekend with my parents in York, as usual.

So far, my post about Kinky Boots is the only one about what we did in London that has gone live, but there are several more to come throughout this month. We packed quite a lot in to what was only a two-night trip; not having our ten-year-old in tow meant we could be a bit more agile. I also have plenty of other blog posts that I have already written to go live in the coming weeks.

GMail is for real

According to Reuters (and many other sources), GMail really isn’t an April Fools Joke. This year’s joke was the jobs on the moon prank, whereas GMail is a legitimate service that is soon to launch.

It does sound interesting, although I have to admit I was one of those who thought it was a joke, mostly because it was like no other email system I’ve heard of and the press release seemed somewhat suspect. So, seeing as it is legitimate, what do I think?

While I probably won’t use it myself (I already have, theoretically, 1GB of email storage), something like this is a very bold step for Google and could set an interesting precedent. It will certainly turn the heat up on Google’s rivals and re-invigorate the webmail market.

But next time I hope they don’t announce something like this on April Fool’s Day.

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