Éducation, éducation, éducation

For the rentrée last week, President Sarkozy has issued a thirty-page Lettre aux Éducateurs. Addressed to all teachers - and indeed parents - it sets out, in stirring and inspiring language, why everything is wrong with the current school system and how it all needs to change. Expect a winter of discontent and strikes.

More cute animals

Right now, what is a "tatou" in French?
It's not a tattoo - that's a 'tatouage'.
It's not the star of Amélie and of the da Vinci Code - she's Audrey Tautou.
Here's a clue.
Of course. It's an armadillo.

And a 'piano crapaud'? It's the less than respectful word for a baby grand piano like ours. A toad piano, indeed....

After being bitten by a radioactive spider, young Peter Parker...

Alright, I know it's not long since the last weird wildlife picture, but this one is truly scary. All your phobias rolled into one. And only ten feet away from the swimming pool.

Update: Thanks to the magic of the internet, I have identified this beast as a female - i.e. big - Argiope bruennichi. All the web :-) pages about it seem to be in French, so I guess it is a local resident.

3,000 years before Obélix

We all went yesterday for lunch with some friends who have a house in a very empty part of the Sidobre. In the afternoon we went walking to see a newly-discovered menhir, dug up by neighbours of theirs a few months ago. The carving is a simple stylised human representation, life-size, with belt, legs and collar. It was probably done about 5,000 years ago. These carved menhirs are a local feature in and around the Sidobre, and there is a museum in Rodez which has a fine collection of them.

Our friends think they may have found another buried menhir in the woods a couple of hundred yards from their house. The shape certainly looks promising. The children lent a hand with the excavation.

Fitou

Back yesterday from playing a solo recital in Fitou, which is near the Mediterranean coast between Narbonne and Perpignan. Fitou is wine country, and boasts four separate Appellations. The white wine harvest has just finished and the red is about to begin. It's rocky and dry around there, very different from the Tarn only 100 miles away. There were cactus growing wild outside the Chapelle where I was playing.

The Chapelle is a pretty little place, tiny in fact, whitewashed inside and now used for exhibitions and occasional concerts. I played a mixed concert for lute, baroque guitar and classical guitar, which I always enjoy doing, although practising three different instruments for one concert can be a challenge.

I took a bit of a risk programming Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal, a big work for classical guitar, at the end of what was otherwise an early music programme, and was pleased that it went down really well. Nocturnal is based on a song by John Dowland from 1597, Come Heavy Sleep, and I like that connection between old and new. I'm playing a mini-recital for the Lute Society later this month, at their residential weekend course in Yorkshire, so I'm planning to do the same for them and hope that they appreciate it!

I met some interesting characters there, including an American artist who divides his year between his places in France, New York and Hawaii. Lovely man, and very knowledgeable about music. My host was a friendly Scottish potter who ran a restaurant in Fitou for twenty years.