Paris in the the spring

It's been years since I last went to Paris, so this weekend I am going there to catch up with what's changed (and get a new metro map). The occasion is the French Lute Society's annual Journées du Luth: exhibition, concerts, discussions and a bit of good old-fashioned networking. I shall take the camera and report back next week.

Creative commons

Last night's catering novelty: Ken Hom's egg fried rice. The children want to have it again.

Tonight's: Pink omelette. Ken Hom hasn't done a recipe for this one but the secret is simple - just an ordinary omelette with red food colouring. No-one wants this again.

Winter

So now we know. Spring has not yet arrived. I have put my giant hedge-trimming project on hold because it's just too darn cold and miserable outside for that sort of thing.

Lowri has gone to England for a week's intensive work, so I am temporarily the sole chauffeur/ cook / homework assistant etc. Still I'm managing to get some work done during the day. I have just completed three arrangements for cello and guitar of some favourite pieces by Albeniz (n.b. safely out of copyright), which Lowri and I will be playing in a concert in Castres this summer.

Philomena has been studying Emile Zola at school and now wants to read La Bête Humaine. It's one of the master's shorter works at only 435 pages. It's a story of homicidal folly and blind violence on nineteenth-century steam trains. Good luck to her. Meanwhile Herne is rapidly devouring the collected Blake and Mortimer, Lucky Luke, and Asterix, while Fearnley is working through the Lord of the Rings. I'm reading La Dame aux Camélias and can't decide whether it's genuinely sympathetic to the tragedy of the femme entretenue or just prurient. Probably both. Lowri is being kept up to the mark with a pile of fat French novels from her book club. Too heavy for a hand-luggage-only trip, though, so she's taken some Sudokus instead.

Let's talk about the weather

Tomorrow is officially the first day of Spring. Today, however, it has been snowing. Ten minutes ago there was a fierce north wind, bringing with it a horizontal hailstorm. Now the sky is blue and sunny. Will it be Spring when we wake up tomorrow? Nailbiting stuff.

A handful of dust

Sculpture that cost £132,000 crushed to dust

A sculpture by Anish Kapoor, entrusted to a specialist fine art storage firm, was probably mistaken for builders' rubble, dumped in a skip and destroyed by a waste crusher, a high court judge concluded yesterday.

Full story in the Guardian here.

Menorca

Here are two of the Chuckerbutties enjoying a beer in the hotel of the Hotel Barceló Hamilton in Menorca, their expressions showing clearly their delight at the hotel facilities. Just out of sight behind them, but most definitely within earshot, is the Saturday night live entertainment in the hotel bar. Sample it yourself here, in a mercifully brief video.

The theatre that we played in was beautiful. Built in 1829 and refurbished a few years ago, it's a wonderful construction in red and gold with five layers of balconies and a lovely clear acoustic.

The concert was also memorable for the first public exposure of Michael Murray's new South American hat, a rastafarian mohican fashion riot.

Busting out all over

Spring in France does not officially begin until the 21st of March but the flowers are coming out already: daffodils, hyacinths, violets, primroses, japonica, forsythia, azalea (I think...).

Meanwhile indoors, Herne's orange plant, grown from a seed and brought with us from England, has started to develop some very business-like spikes. I guess the plant considers that it has made the transition from expendable seedling to aspiring orange tree, and that there is now something worth protecting.

Wah-wah

I've started going to the weekly jazz workshop at the Ecole de Musique. Which gives me the chance to play my venerable old semi-acoustic Harmony guitar. It dates from the early 60's and I bought it second-hand from the original owner, a fellow-member of the Lauderdale Guitar Society, in the late 80's. The guitar is nothing special (in fact I have been told that the Bigsby tremolo arm is worth more than the rest of the instrument) but it's fun to play, and it's louder than the lute. Now I have to learn to improvise something convincing when it comes to my turn to do a 'chorus'. This requires instantaneous recall and assembly of a frightening quantity of scale patterns and extended chord shapes. I love a challenge.

Meanwhile, on Sunday Lowri and I played a concert in the Temple de Castres, with recorder player Pierre Hudrisier, of sonatas and trios by Vivaldi, Bach etc. Good for Anglo-French relations, and we were able to rustle up the local Brits to help swell the audience to a respectable 120. Philomena's friends came rushing up to her in great excitement at school this morning, brandishing the local paper which had our pictures in it.

Off to Menorca this weekend to add yet more territory to the Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet's gradual conquest of Spain.