Pau

I've not been doing much on this blog recently. For the last six months, in fact. Shameful. Although I have been more active on my other blog, http://eatslutes.blogspot.com/, which is more specifically lute-related.

Anyway, sort of covering both areas, I've just played a couple of concerts in the magnificent Château de Pau. It's in a fabulous location, with a long south-facing facade giving a panoramic view of the nearby Pyrenees. The Château itself is strongly associated with king Henri IV, who was born there in 1553, and our concert presented pieces by his musicians. Which means that our music might actually have been played in the same space 400 years ago...

Antiphona is a Toulouse-based vocal group, largely made up of professors and former postgraduate students of the early music department at the Toulouse Conservatoire. They're a good group, with innovative programming, and I hope to be doing more with them in 2010.

Sodium chlorate

I was nearly as surprised as Fearnley to discover that the Lycée Barral comes in at number 41 out of the 1,909 lycées in France in the recent rankings by L'Express. Barral achieved a 99% pass rate for the baccalauréat in 2008. Pretty impressive.

Look a little further down the tables and an interesting story emerges. Lycées cover the final three years of school: seconde, première, terminale. At Barral, only 62% of those in Seconde make it through to the final baccalauréat exam at the end of terminale, against 75% nationally. So there is some pretty ruthless weeding going on. And, according to the tables, there are 142 students in seconde, whereas in troisième (Fearnley's year) there must be close to 200. More weeding. Where do they all go? Mostly to Castres' biggest lyceé, the Borde Basse, which presents nearly four times as many Bac candidates and comes in at a still-respectable 713 in the national rankings.

In the Figaro listings, Barral comes even higher at number 26.

France's got talent

We have some excellent local bands here in the Tarn. Such a shame I'm not around this weekend to see Burning Fart in action. I assume they take their inspiration from the Flaming Lips.

Marten not Martin

Just saw one of these outside the dining window. Quite startled me - it's a bloody great thing, the size of a large cat. It ran along the window ledge, up the wall and disappeared into a hole at the top of the window with just its tail hanging out. Nesting, maybe.

Pine martens are extremely rare in Britain: the few that are left are almost all in Scotland, though it's believed that they're beginning to reappear in England and Wales. They're more common in France, especially in hilly or mountainous regions. We have pine trees in the garden, so maybe it's not so surprising to see a marten here.

Rising Sun

This makes it seem real. The Tokyo Bunka Kaikan calendar for March 2009 includes, on Sunday 15th:

"The first concert of Chuckerbutty ocarina quartet in Japan"

Suddenly it's scary.......

Les voitures

More words you never wanted to know:

Rotule = broken bit on car
Barre de direction = broken bit on car
Amortisseur = broken bit on car
Pris en charge = covered by insurance : )
Franchise = excess on insurance : (

Social progress

French TV is showing a programme on 27 January called L'abolition about the end of the death penalty in France in .... 1981. The last person to be guillotined was in 1977. Britain got there rather earlier, with the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965.

One of the main forces behind the abolition in France was a lawyer called Robert Badinter, who became Minister for Justice in 1981. He was also responsible for decriminalising homosexuality in 1982. Again, England got there first, in 1967, although the Scots had to wait until 1980 and the Northern Irish, for some reason, until 1982.

France has also lagged behind on other social reforms. Women have been able to vote in the UK since 1918, subject to limitation, and all women since 1928. French women got the vote in 1945. British 18-year olds have been able to vote since 1969; French ones, despite (or maybe because of) the 1968 riots, only since 1974. Britain has had separate taxation of husbands and wives since 1989; France hasn't got there yet.

Still, in one area of life the French are a century ahead. Church and state were formally separated in 1905, and laïcité is now a central Republican value. Not so in Britain, where the connection goes right up to the very top and, incredibly, 25 bishops still sit in the House of Lords.