Tourism

After my weekend at the Journées du Luth (very enjoyable) I stayed on in Paris for some sightseeing on Monday. Here's a classic scene of the Tuileries gardens with, of course, the Eiffel Tower in the background. As usual, click to enlarge.

Before that, I'd been to the Louvre, which is enormous. It needs to be, to accommodate the huge number of visitors. Especially around the Mona Lisa, which has a whole wall to itself and its own queuing system. For 5 euros you can hire a special Da Vinci Code audioguide to get the best out of the museum.

Far fewer visitors in the North European sculpture department, where I came across this wonderful carving of Mary Magdalene by a German sculptor in 1510. She is quite well covered at the front too.

The flight back on Monday evening was delayed by an hour. Our pilot admitted that the plane had been struck by lightning on its inward flight from Madrid, and he had called for engineers to inspect it. The storm reached us at home on Tuesday afternoon: torrential rain, hail, thunder, lightning and overflowing gutters.

The children have gone ice-skating this afternoon.

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.

Motors

Lowri has just gone out in the New Car to fetch Philomena from visiting a friend. The New Car got off to a bad start (or rather, didn't) because the day after we brought it home, the battery was totally flat and wouldn't do anything. So, I phoned the garage, went down there in the old car to borrow their battery kickstart thing, came back home, started the new car, drove that to the garage, and got them to replace the battery. Which they did graciously and without fuss. I just wish they'd done it before.

By contrast, the lawnmower is rejuvenated since its service. They have even got the self-propelling mechanism to work again, so it springs forward like an eager thoroughbred when I squeeze the handle. We cleared a lot of leaves together yesterday.

Stage

Yesterday we went to fetch Herne from his music course, held in the deepest wilds of the Tarn countryside at the Base de Razisse. The course finished with a half-hour concert, which we and the 28 other proud families greatly enjoyed. Quite an achievement for a bunch of mostly 8 and 9 year olds, put together in only three days. Herne looked thoroughly professional with his trombone, even though his feet didn't quite reach the ground. And, much more important, he got to the final of the course table tennis competition.

Today the wind and rain has stopped, so I went into the garden this afternoon and hacked out a huge amount of dead wood from the rhododendrons. I hope they reward me with a bumper display this spring.

Ragtime

If you're a Scott Joplin fan, this site will be invaluable. It has 50-60 pieces of Joplin sheet music, assembled from various digital collections.

The site also has links to several collections of digitised sheet music, with an emphasis on ragtime and ragtime-era music. How about the E. Azalia Hackley (you couldn't make it up) collection of 19th and 20th Century Sheet Music of Negro Themes, in the Detroit Public Library? It even has an index by subject, so you can quickly browse for (say) "Overweight Women -- Songs and Music" and come up with this little gem, You've Got To Love Me a Lot.


"Miss Susannah Jackson,
was a great attraction,
weighed about four hundred pounds,
Coffee coloured beauty,
and they called her cuty,
a hunk of love that knew no bounds,
Loved a midget nigger,
and he was no bigger
Than a measly black and tan" etc etc

Prudently, the site has a disclaimer:
"The Detroit Public Library presents these documents as part of the record of the past. These primary historical documents reflect the attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times. The Detroit Public Library and DALNET do not endorse the views expressed in these collections, which may contain materials offensive to some readers."

All in a row

We found these fellows walking along the path in our woods today. They are called 'chenilles processionaires du pin' because they walk in long lines, head to tail. We counted 91 of them in this procession. They develop in nests high up in pine trees where they can cause a lot of damage.

And they're dangerous when they come to earth too, because they have a highly irritating spray which can cause a serious rash, as I discovered last year before I knew this. Apparently they are particularly dangerous to dogs who, being dogs, will snuffle at them and even eat them and then suffer the consequences. So, stay away.

Click the photos to see the full hairy detail.

The town drain

Spoonerisms - uniquely English. Actually, no. The French have had their own version, known as Contrepèteries, for a lot longer. According to my Petit Robert dictionary, the word dates from 1582, but the example they give, from Rabelais, is even older: "Femme folle à la messe" pour "femme molle à la fesse". The contrepèterie is usually a bit rude. One French favourite, which I've heard from at least two independent sources, is "glisser dans la piscine". Work it out for yourself. It all makes the Revd. Spooner (you have tasted two whole worms, etc) seem a bit, well, Victorian.

Of course there are rude Spoonerisms in English too, but Lowri won't let me repeat them in polite company.

I like the unrude one which the French attribute to the Belgians - their version of an Irish joke - "Il est beau et chaud".

Vroom

Classe de neige successfully accomplished. They did have some snow, and Herne returned yesterday with a badge and an official stamped booklet to show that he has reached 'Flocon' (snowflake) level in skiing. His football match against Mazamet today has been cancelled, probably because of the unremitting rain. But never mind, it's the first day of half-term hols.

Transporting a family of five with no public transport has been a bit of a juggling act, on top of which our faithful Audi estate is now reaching a mature old age at 12 and a half. So we've decided to get a second car. Here it is in the garage forecourt. Still an Audi, an A3 this time, smaller but newer. We'll pick it up next week once we've sorted out the payment, insurance etc.

Skiiiiiiiiiiiii

Herne has gone on a Classe de Neige this week. It's the school ski trip, seen as an essential experience in French education. They have gone to a village called La Cabanasse in the Pyrénées Orientales. I hope they have some snow. Here's a postcard of it in pre-global warming days.

In Catalonia

Back last night from a weekend in Girona where the Chuckerbutties were playing a concert in the brand new Palau de Congressos. It's (just about) within driving distance from home, and it was Philomena's 11th birthday too, so we made a family trip of it. We stayed in the smart new Hotel Palau Bellavista and the children had a great time running around and emptying all the soft drinks from the complimentary minibars. There was an overdose of anxiety for three of the Chuckerbutties, since the fourth one (who shall not be named) missed his flight, but he managed to arrive in time......

Family music

Quick update on the family music front.

Fearnley played his Prokofiev Tarantella in a student concert on Wednesday. He's been working hard at it and it went well. He's been promoted into a higher music theory class and is much happier with that.

Philomena has been doing Step (a dance routine) classes at school. And practising at home, with the backing music, so we all now know "Love don't leave me now" better we might want to...

Herne's trombone, on hire from the music school, has gone in to be repaired because a small but important lever has broken. It should come back next week sparkling clean and oiled, in time for the short residential course that he's doing at half-term. As an inducement, the attendees have been promised ping-pong and archery as well as band rehearsals.

Blowout

We were invited out for two splendid meals this weekend.

Number one: David is a footballing friend of Herne's, a lively little chap who never stops talking, and his parents wanted to treat us all to some French new year's specialities. So we had salade de gésiers, smoked salmon, foie gras, oysters, and galette des rois. Yummee. David's dad Patrick wore a special protective glove for opening the oysters, which was made of chain mail and looked like something from a suit of armour. Very professional. Herne and David enjoyed themselves watching Real Madrid TV. Staggered home late and got up late on Sunday morning in time for...

Number two: a superb slap-up lunch with local British friends. Charcuterie, lasagne, cheese with genuine English cream crackers, chocolate cake and fruit salad, followed by an DVD for the children. There's something very reassuring about having a good old chat in English about home affairs, and it helps to reinforce the sense of English roots for the children. Very enjoyable too. Somehow we didn't feel the need for any supper in the evening.

I saw today that Natalie Wheen from Classic FM has chosen the Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet as one of her favourite CDs from 2006. Thanks Natalie!

The children have already memorised the complete Fawlty Towers which I brought back from England last week.

It's a charango, but not as we know it

Home again, somewhat exhausted after playing six concerts and driving 750 miles in four days.

This picture shows one of the weirdest instruments I have ever seen. This is Ernesto Cavour playing his 'Little Star' charango. It provides a little light relief in a largely incomprehensible academic article on The Charango as Transcultural Icon of Andean Music. Maybe when I grow up I will understand what 'mental syncretism' means.