When I started this blog five years and seven months ago it was to be some kind of hybrid between a diary, a commonplace book and what I can only describe as an exercise in writing. It had a precedent. From the late 1970s on, although I don’t remember when exactly I started, I kept a written diary, although that, too, was occasionally something of a commonplace book.
The 1970s were, as, of course, everyone reading this - online - a decade in pre-history: there was no internet and so no such blog as this could exist. I have little knowledge of the genesis of the internet and even less interest. It is now so much part of our lives that there not being an internet will be as alien to some - those, I assume of my daughter’s generation who are 19 and younger - as to many of the world’s population as there not being any cars or, to narrow that population down somewhat to the ‘civilised world’, there not being any hot water on tap and flushing lavatories.
But, dear young ones, there was such a time, and although it might seem incredible to you who is apt and accustomed to recording his or her every thought, ‘life event’ and enthusiasm on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instathis and Instathat, there was such a time, and although admittedly it was on occasion a real struggle, we coped.
In those days ‘a diary’ was handwritten. I wrote mine in A4 hardback ledgers (which I still have somewhere) and it was a laborious task. I am left-handed and my writing is pretty much illegible, though I must add not in a cramped, spidery, sinister way, but more in a grandiose, attractive way.
From afar my handwriting looks rather nice, artistic even in an undisciplined kind of way; but up close - and we tend to read unclose when we try to read a handwritten document - it is pretty much unintelligible. That doesn’t, of course, matter, because not only has no one else tried to read it, I haven’t even tried to read it. In a sense - scatological alert! - writing a diary is pretty much for most of us like having an emotional dump.
There are, of course, those, to my mind excessively self-important people who keep a diary ‘for posterity’: politicians, theatre directors, snobs, those kind of people. I regard them as excessively self-important because from the off they have persuaded themselves that their future lives will be of such brilliance and of such interest that at some time in the years to come the world and its poodles will be queuing up to by their diaries once published. (Which snob? Try James Lees-Milne.)
To date I have been not a politician, theatre director or, I hope, a snob, and I at my age I am unlikely to go down those paths, so the diaries I kept were personal, nominally ‘for my eyes only’. And there’s the rub: I could and can simply not get my head around the point of recording your thought, feelings and emotions by hand, in my case laboriously, if no budger will ever catch sight of what you have put down on paper. And I still can’t, so when along came the internet (in the very, very early days romantically dubbed ‘the world wide net’ and quite fatuously ‘the information superhighway’ - try telling that to those net users in totalitarian countries where access to the net is strictly controlled), it seemed a godsend: not only could I drivel on about whatever I liked at some length, I could do so in a blog and quite possibly it would be read! Well!
There, however is the second rub: by whom could and would it be read? I know that two friends occasionally drop in to give my blog a read and I know my sister once did regularly, and it is not at all unlikely, given colleague and other friends might happen by, so I would be better advised to be more circumspect in what I recorded in my blog than I had been obliged to be when I was still having that regular emotional dump by hand in several A4 hardback ledgers. And what would it be like if I let rip about this, that and t’other - which was the inspiration for this entry - and my wife happened upon this blog.
That would be pretty unlikely, but less unlikely would be my daughter now 19 - where did the years go?- and my son, 16, finding their way here to find out what Dad does when he’s tapping away. (I must reassure both friends and my sister that there is, in fact, nothing I want to record about them which I would not be quite happy to tell them to their faces. But if there were - well, you see the dilemma.)
. . .
My last entry was partly about our Jack Russell, Russell, and he again, and his position in the Powell household, has brought me to my keyboard again tonight. Here’s a question: who gets a dog and keeps it in a cage in the hall and, when the dog needs a dump, takes him out on a lead?
To put matters into context, we live as much of a rural environment as you could hope for in Britain, possibly even more so. We live in a granite cottage which, although it is not large and was renovated as much by my wife’s own hard work as by builders - a few years before we married - and which would be every Brit’s wet dream. To the front we have a large expanse of green as we do to the back. There is a second expanse of green in what might be called the ‘top garden’ and then there’s a piece of land on which my wife gardens.
We don’t live in a city, a town, a small town, a village or even a small village. There is a road nearby but it is not busy. So all that makes it my instinct to ‘let the dog out’. OK, he will roam, but why shouldn’t he. I mentioned as much to my son earlier today and he, the nominal ‘owner’ of the dog - my ever-so-slightly left-wing side, though admirably kept in check by my ever-so-slightly right-wing side, balks at the notion of animals being ‘owned’ and I hope you get my meaning - commented that Russell ‘could be run over’.
Well, yes, he could. But then so could I, so could he and so could the rest of the household. I have often, probably too often, commented to my wife that given her attitude to Russell, she should get herself a zoo if she enjoys, as she apparently does, seeing animals caged up. I don’t.
When, as now (’cos I smoke cigars and have to do so outside) I am sitting outside (at present composing this latest entry to my blog), I want young Russell to be enjoying himself in the fresh air, sniffing this and sniffing that. And I know he shares my point of view: every time the front door is opened, he is out like a shot. What is a man to do? For the purpose of illuminating the spaces where young Russell might be able to roam were he allowed by others, here are a few photos.
These are the ‘top’ garden and the ‘back’ garden’. The ‘front’ garden picture was somehow to green, as in bloody awful viridian green, to use.
Since taking these, it has occurred to me that 1) some folk might think that I am ‘showing off’; and 2) I am bloody well showing off. That second charge would be far more serious, so let me try to put things into context. Yes, I live in a very nice part of Britain, but it was a sheer stroke of luck which brought me what I regard as my good fortune (of which by far the main element it two children.)
Until I was 45, I was knocking around from newspaper to newspaper, growing older, growing more lined and getting more and more fed up. Then fate - and details of which might follow, or might not - took me into matrimony with a woman from North Cornwall whose family run a beef farm and, pertinently, was given this cottage by her father. It was until she renovated it - and did a great deal of the physical work herself - a ruin. It had not been inhabited for nigh-on 50 years and then most recently by cows. It was used as a cow shed.
That she took a fancy to me was a matter of sheer luck (though I suspect that fancy as rather dimmed over the years - again details, possibly, to follow. Whether they do depends upon whether this blog can revert in part to being ‘a diary’ and, crucially, whether I can be assure not she nor my children ever get to read what must under the circumstances be reasonably candid comments and thoughts. We’ll see.
. . .
PS Most of what my wife tells me these days begins with ‘Don’t...’ Sorry to be cynical, but my advice to all young men in the throes of love is: get over it. They way that most women take after their mothers. In my wife’s case that isn’t true. Her mother, my mother-in-law, now dead and who I knew but briefly before illness rather curtailed her life was a darling and as open to the world as my wife is closed. Sadly (he says, risking his daughter happening upon this blog) I suspect it is true of her and my wife. Oh well. As for sons taking after fathers, it’s also partly true. And my son - what a charmer! (Elsie, dear heart, you do know my tongue is invariably in my cheek.)
. . .
PPS On the CD notes of many recordings are listed the various and different piece of kit use by the recorded band. Capital idea, and in that spirit might I record that this blog was composed on a Macbook Pro (silver old school) using the very good Bean word processor and uploaded on Firefox.
More pertinently it this entry was facilitated by several tall glasses of Lidl Mojito cocktail (£3.99 for 70cl, bloody good value by anyone’s standard’s, and the Tesco and Asda equivalents are 51p more expensive) and latterly my third La Paz Wilde Cigarros. Think I’ve got more money than sense to be smoking those (admittedly only 13.99 euros if you buy them online rather than pay the cynically exorbitant prices demanded for the very same cigars in Britain).
If you want to have a reasonable whack to be spraying around to afford Lidl Mojito and La Pax cigars, my advice is to find yourself a job in the bullshit industry. If, as I have you can survive 41 years before the mast talking and writing bollocks, the pay ain’t half bad, even if, like me, you are still a casual amazed you have made it thus far.
Saturday, 8 August 2015
Friday, 7 August 2015
That itch to write: Today, dogs, two weeks spent in Corfu almost 30 years ago, irate taxi drivers and how it might, I hope, all hang together, including the important revelation that I am not bisexual, despite what I now suspect were the hopes of one young man and one young woman, if possibly not another young woman (but who knows?)
When is a dog more than a dog? A fair enough question, of course, but don’t expect any grandiosely sentimental bull from me. A dog is always a dog. It’s never a cat or an ironing board or, heaven help us, a politician (though . . . )
Years ago, I had the misfortune to end up in some sort-of resort in the north of Corfu. It was the second week of my holiday and I had ended up there by pure chance. Wanting a break and not really knowing where to go, I had simply booked a flight to Corfu aboard I don’t know which budget airline and arrive at Corfu airport at about 9pm.
When I got my ticket - this was in the mid-eighties and nothing was done online - I was surprised to find that included in the price was one night’s stay at a hotel. At the time I had no idea why, but I later found out that Greece was getting so fed up with smelly hippy types - they did exist, you know - simply flying out to ‘the islands’, then dossing about here and there that it insisted every traveller should have at least one night’s accommodation booked. As usual the airlines found a way around that ‘difficulty’ without spending a penny.
So I arrived at the airport, picked up my luggage, found a taxi and asked him to take me to --- hotel. It turned out the hotel was miles and miles and miles away at the very south of the island and why didn’t he take me to a local bed and breakfast for the night.
‘But,’ I told him, ‘I already have a room booked there and [this was important to me] already paid for.’
‘Oh, never mind that,’ he said, ‘there are plenty of cheap places you can stay tonight and go there tomorrow.’
But I couldn’t see the point. A room had been booked for me and I had already paid for it. Why not got there? So we did.
Corfu is not a big island, but it took us an immensely long time to get there. Eventually we left the roads and drove ever further down this track and that, deeper and deeper into deepest Corfu until we found the hotel. I have no idea when we got there, but it was dark and empty and very much closed. I had no idea what was going on. But I paid my fare, the taxi took off again and I was left wondering what to do next.
Somehow, and at this point, at least 27 years later I really can’t remember all that much but I do remember banging on very door I could find did arouse someone. He was a caretaker and had no idea who I was. No room had been reserved for me, we established, but I could have one. The following morning, after an awful night plagued by mosquitoes, I came ‘down to breakfast’ to find out that this quite big hotel was not completely closed, despite what appeared to be the case halfway through the night before.
A woman ‘booked me in’ for a week and I discovered that the hotel had just one other guest. He, too, was English, I discovered over the next few days. He was what we Brits called ‘a twitcher’, a bird-watcher and had come to this most remote part of South Corfu to watch birds. He was also an alcoholic. I don’t mean that in any judgmental, and I most certainly am not being judgmental. I am merely describing him as the kind of person I had until then never really encountered.
The hotel was in woods not far up a hill and at the bottom of the hill was a bar/cafe. There might well have been one or two other houses around but I didn’t notice them. I must say that that spot was what I would now cherish, sheer peace and quiet and thus bliss. But for me then, a younger man with a desire for ‘action’ it really was a no-no.
For one week I fell into a certain pattern of sleeping late, getting up, trotting down the hill to the bar, staying there all day doing but reading - it was, I remember well, Richard Ellman’s biography of Oscar Wilde, drinking beer and otherise doing nothing (‘chilling’). I had lunch at the bar, then later in the afternoon the alcoholic twitcher turned up, we had supper together, drank more, he got a little drunk and bought himself - I remember this distinctly - a litre bottle of white Cinzano to be finished off later that night, then we both staggered up the hill again to our hotel.
In that week there was never one other guest although the hotel had at least 50 rooms. And this was in June. The twitcher, who had polished off his litre of white Cinzano throughout the night after polishing off as many cans of Carlsberg as I had, was always - or appeared to be always - as sober as a judge the following morning when we met up for a late breakfast. And one day we both went on a minor tourist trip on what was probably a small shrimp fishing boat, although in that matter - do they fish for shrimps off the coast of Corfu? - I am fully prepared to stand corrected.
But for this youngish card who desired ‘more action’ that spot was too quiet, and pissed off with the legerdemain of fictiously booking me into a hotel in the back of beyond I decided to return to Old Blighty (Britain) a week early. I checked out, paid up and got a taxi back to the airport.
There I discovered that I was booked on a flight due to leave the following week and that I couldn’t change that booking, so I headed back into town. (I had, by the way found out from some holiday rep or other at the airport what the usual price was for a taxi ride back into Corfu town, so when my driver tried to charge me four times as much I challenged him and said it should be a lot less. He became furious and in is proud fury declared OK, I would pay NOTHING. I took him by his word. That’s the Greeks for for you, fully prepared, it would seem to cut off their noses to spite their faces and anyone aware of the recent euro difficulties might care to bear his behaviour in mind.
So I had another week to spend in Corfu, and when I asked around where I might visit, I was given the name of a resort in the extreme north of the island. (I have been onto Google maps to try to find its name, but - literally - all the names are Greek to me so I can’t help you out. I went to the bus station, found the relevant bus and took it north. When I got there I asked around - in English, of course - and rented a room for a week, a bedroom with an adjacent shower.
Where to do dogs come into all this? Well, I shall tell you, but I’ve determined to take the long way around.
The resort was just that: it wasn’t a fishing village which had been expanded or anything like that, it was a purpose-built small resort. And small is the word. It had one main drag along which were the usual restaurants and bars and here and there were hotels, guest houses and apartments. I remember it stank of shit to the nth degree (as, by the way did Corfu Town; I should imagine that its sewerage system was designed and built in the late 19th century and completely unprepared for the masses of tourists which descended upon it from the second half of the 20th century on when those on lower pay were more able to afford foreign travel).
For that week I did very little but follow the pattern of my first week. There were several what we then called ‘discos’, and I remember hooking up with two Brit women, fancying one but being manouevred into bed at my place by the second. It must have been the worst shag of my life, but - I’m nothing if not honest - it was probably ten times as bad for her.
Her friend, the one I had fancied, had instead copped off with a travel rep and, I can’t remember how, we all met the following day when he offered to take us on a tour of the island in his car. We stopped off at a taverna for lunch and at one point in a pretty wide-ranging conversation his woman suddenly asked us both - the male rep and me - whether we were bisexual. I can’t think why. I told her I wasn’t, he said nothing. And writing about it here, almost 30 years later, I’m wondering whether she and he and perhaps her friend with whom I had spent a rather boring night, had put two and two together, arrived at five and were hoping for a rather less conventional sexual encounter. I don’t know. I’ll leave that one with you. If they were, I will have disappointed them.
Anyway. As I say, my week there consisted of sleeping late, finding a bar for lunch, drinking beer and reading and writing letters describing it all. Bearing in mind that the whole of this small, rather dysfunctional resort smelled of shit, I remember opining that the reason the Brits were so keen on going to Greece was that they they felt unchallenged by the sanitation. (At one point exploring this bloody awful place, I came across a small stream by which quite a few Brits were sunbathing just yards away. The water of this stream was a quite awful opaque light grey and smelled overwhelmingly of shit. Yet none of those sunbathing nearby seem to notice and if they did notice, even worse, were wholly unconcerned.)
But now to dogs. Like most dead and alive places in the sun this resort had a rather large population of stray dogs. These were, without exception, mangy, thin and appeared disease-ridden. So I was very surprised one evening when sitting in the forecourt of one ‘restaurant’ along the main drag (with two women, that I remember, though I can’t remember who they were or whether they were the two from earlier) to be asked by a passing elderly Brit: ‘Have you seen a dog.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked him. ‘I’ve seen loads.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but he’s a lovely dog, you must have seen him.’ He then explained that he and his wife, both dog lovers, had taken a shine to one of the what seemed like several hundreds of stray dog up and down that main drag and were in the habit of feeding it. This dog was, to them, special.
. . .
What brought me to the topic of dogs is our dog, a Jack Russell, rather unimaginatively named by our son Russell. I’ve mentioned him before. Briefly, I was against getting a dog, though not because I don’t like dogs, but because dogs are a responsibility and are, as they say, ‘for life’. My son, who is the nominal ‘owner’, was very enthusiastic and, up to a point, still is. But I dogs, especially Jack Russells, need daily exercise and attention and I wonder just how enthusiastic he will be come the cold, rainy winter days when the dog still needs a walk. That remains to be seen.
I was, as I say and for that reason against our household acquiring a dog, but as I was overruled and as we now have him, I do love him. He is, admittedly, not at all bright and is only interested in being cuddled, running for tennis balls and hanging around at your feet whenever you are eating, to be given whatever scraps might find their way to him, but I am now very fond of him. As is, no doubt, my wife. But she and I have very different views on how a dog should be treated and what freedoms he should have.
I subscribe to what I think is the mainstream view that dogs are outdoor animals who should be allowed out of doors whenever possible. She, on the other hand and to put it both ungallantly and bluntly, would have made a great jailer. We live in the depths of the North Cornwall countryside next to her brother’s beef farm and are surrounded by fields. More pertinently although we are by no means ‘rich’, we are lucky to live in a cottage with, on three sides, reasonably large areas of grassland. But when he is taken out be her ‘to relieve himself’, she always puts him on a lead. I can’t get my head around that.
When I go outside to sit and read and take Russell with me, every few minutes she is shouting out of the window: ‘Where’s Russell, what’s he doing? You’ve got to keep an eye on him!’
Why? He’s a bloody dog. He’s mooching around. That’s what dog’s do. He was born about seven months ago and so, in human terms, is now a young lad. And that would explain why every time the front door is opened he is out like a shot. He’s not some old fart like me, he’s young and wants to explore. But no, when I’m not around he is kept indoors and watched over. And I can’t stand it. I can’t stand zoos and I can’t stand any animal caged up, whether in fact or metaphorically.
Yes, I think that old codger looking for ‘his dog’ among several thousand mangy straw dogs was a tad twp, but part of me completely understands his affection. And it is that part which sighs every time our Russell is treated like the inmate of a concentration camp (though, as always, I exaggerate a little). But it seems I am waging a losing battle.
Years ago, I had the misfortune to end up in some sort-of resort in the north of Corfu. It was the second week of my holiday and I had ended up there by pure chance. Wanting a break and not really knowing where to go, I had simply booked a flight to Corfu aboard I don’t know which budget airline and arrive at Corfu airport at about 9pm.
When I got my ticket - this was in the mid-eighties and nothing was done online - I was surprised to find that included in the price was one night’s stay at a hotel. At the time I had no idea why, but I later found out that Greece was getting so fed up with smelly hippy types - they did exist, you know - simply flying out to ‘the islands’, then dossing about here and there that it insisted every traveller should have at least one night’s accommodation booked. As usual the airlines found a way around that ‘difficulty’ without spending a penny.
So I arrived at the airport, picked up my luggage, found a taxi and asked him to take me to --- hotel. It turned out the hotel was miles and miles and miles away at the very south of the island and why didn’t he take me to a local bed and breakfast for the night.
‘But,’ I told him, ‘I already have a room booked there and [this was important to me] already paid for.’
‘Oh, never mind that,’ he said, ‘there are plenty of cheap places you can stay tonight and go there tomorrow.’
But I couldn’t see the point. A room had been booked for me and I had already paid for it. Why not got there? So we did.
Corfu is not a big island, but it took us an immensely long time to get there. Eventually we left the roads and drove ever further down this track and that, deeper and deeper into deepest Corfu until we found the hotel. I have no idea when we got there, but it was dark and empty and very much closed. I had no idea what was going on. But I paid my fare, the taxi took off again and I was left wondering what to do next.
Somehow, and at this point, at least 27 years later I really can’t remember all that much but I do remember banging on very door I could find did arouse someone. He was a caretaker and had no idea who I was. No room had been reserved for me, we established, but I could have one. The following morning, after an awful night plagued by mosquitoes, I came ‘down to breakfast’ to find out that this quite big hotel was not completely closed, despite what appeared to be the case halfway through the night before.
A woman ‘booked me in’ for a week and I discovered that the hotel had just one other guest. He, too, was English, I discovered over the next few days. He was what we Brits called ‘a twitcher’, a bird-watcher and had come to this most remote part of South Corfu to watch birds. He was also an alcoholic. I don’t mean that in any judgmental, and I most certainly am not being judgmental. I am merely describing him as the kind of person I had until then never really encountered.
The hotel was in woods not far up a hill and at the bottom of the hill was a bar/cafe. There might well have been one or two other houses around but I didn’t notice them. I must say that that spot was what I would now cherish, sheer peace and quiet and thus bliss. But for me then, a younger man with a desire for ‘action’ it really was a no-no.
For one week I fell into a certain pattern of sleeping late, getting up, trotting down the hill to the bar, staying there all day doing but reading - it was, I remember well, Richard Ellman’s biography of Oscar Wilde, drinking beer and otherise doing nothing (‘chilling’). I had lunch at the bar, then later in the afternoon the alcoholic twitcher turned up, we had supper together, drank more, he got a little drunk and bought himself - I remember this distinctly - a litre bottle of white Cinzano to be finished off later that night, then we both staggered up the hill again to our hotel.
In that week there was never one other guest although the hotel had at least 50 rooms. And this was in June. The twitcher, who had polished off his litre of white Cinzano throughout the night after polishing off as many cans of Carlsberg as I had, was always - or appeared to be always - as sober as a judge the following morning when we met up for a late breakfast. And one day we both went on a minor tourist trip on what was probably a small shrimp fishing boat, although in that matter - do they fish for shrimps off the coast of Corfu? - I am fully prepared to stand corrected.
But for this youngish card who desired ‘more action’ that spot was too quiet, and pissed off with the legerdemain of fictiously booking me into a hotel in the back of beyond I decided to return to Old Blighty (Britain) a week early. I checked out, paid up and got a taxi back to the airport.
There I discovered that I was booked on a flight due to leave the following week and that I couldn’t change that booking, so I headed back into town. (I had, by the way found out from some holiday rep or other at the airport what the usual price was for a taxi ride back into Corfu town, so when my driver tried to charge me four times as much I challenged him and said it should be a lot less. He became furious and in is proud fury declared OK, I would pay NOTHING. I took him by his word. That’s the Greeks for for you, fully prepared, it would seem to cut off their noses to spite their faces and anyone aware of the recent euro difficulties might care to bear his behaviour in mind.
So I had another week to spend in Corfu, and when I asked around where I might visit, I was given the name of a resort in the extreme north of the island. (I have been onto Google maps to try to find its name, but - literally - all the names are Greek to me so I can’t help you out. I went to the bus station, found the relevant bus and took it north. When I got there I asked around - in English, of course - and rented a room for a week, a bedroom with an adjacent shower.
Where to do dogs come into all this? Well, I shall tell you, but I’ve determined to take the long way around.
The resort was just that: it wasn’t a fishing village which had been expanded or anything like that, it was a purpose-built small resort. And small is the word. It had one main drag along which were the usual restaurants and bars and here and there were hotels, guest houses and apartments. I remember it stank of shit to the nth degree (as, by the way did Corfu Town; I should imagine that its sewerage system was designed and built in the late 19th century and completely unprepared for the masses of tourists which descended upon it from the second half of the 20th century on when those on lower pay were more able to afford foreign travel).
For that week I did very little but follow the pattern of my first week. There were several what we then called ‘discos’, and I remember hooking up with two Brit women, fancying one but being manouevred into bed at my place by the second. It must have been the worst shag of my life, but - I’m nothing if not honest - it was probably ten times as bad for her.
Her friend, the one I had fancied, had instead copped off with a travel rep and, I can’t remember how, we all met the following day when he offered to take us on a tour of the island in his car. We stopped off at a taverna for lunch and at one point in a pretty wide-ranging conversation his woman suddenly asked us both - the male rep and me - whether we were bisexual. I can’t think why. I told her I wasn’t, he said nothing. And writing about it here, almost 30 years later, I’m wondering whether she and he and perhaps her friend with whom I had spent a rather boring night, had put two and two together, arrived at five and were hoping for a rather less conventional sexual encounter. I don’t know. I’ll leave that one with you. If they were, I will have disappointed them.
Anyway. As I say, my week there consisted of sleeping late, finding a bar for lunch, drinking beer and reading and writing letters describing it all. Bearing in mind that the whole of this small, rather dysfunctional resort smelled of shit, I remember opining that the reason the Brits were so keen on going to Greece was that they they felt unchallenged by the sanitation. (At one point exploring this bloody awful place, I came across a small stream by which quite a few Brits were sunbathing just yards away. The water of this stream was a quite awful opaque light grey and smelled overwhelmingly of shit. Yet none of those sunbathing nearby seem to notice and if they did notice, even worse, were wholly unconcerned.)
But now to dogs. Like most dead and alive places in the sun this resort had a rather large population of stray dogs. These were, without exception, mangy, thin and appeared disease-ridden. So I was very surprised one evening when sitting in the forecourt of one ‘restaurant’ along the main drag (with two women, that I remember, though I can’t remember who they were or whether they were the two from earlier) to be asked by a passing elderly Brit: ‘Have you seen a dog.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked him. ‘I’ve seen loads.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but he’s a lovely dog, you must have seen him.’ He then explained that he and his wife, both dog lovers, had taken a shine to one of the what seemed like several hundreds of stray dog up and down that main drag and were in the habit of feeding it. This dog was, to them, special.
. . .
What brought me to the topic of dogs is our dog, a Jack Russell, rather unimaginatively named by our son Russell. I’ve mentioned him before. Briefly, I was against getting a dog, though not because I don’t like dogs, but because dogs are a responsibility and are, as they say, ‘for life’. My son, who is the nominal ‘owner’, was very enthusiastic and, up to a point, still is. But I dogs, especially Jack Russells, need daily exercise and attention and I wonder just how enthusiastic he will be come the cold, rainy winter days when the dog still needs a walk. That remains to be seen.
I was, as I say and for that reason against our household acquiring a dog, but as I was overruled and as we now have him, I do love him. He is, admittedly, not at all bright and is only interested in being cuddled, running for tennis balls and hanging around at your feet whenever you are eating, to be given whatever scraps might find their way to him, but I am now very fond of him. As is, no doubt, my wife. But she and I have very different views on how a dog should be treated and what freedoms he should have.
I subscribe to what I think is the mainstream view that dogs are outdoor animals who should be allowed out of doors whenever possible. She, on the other hand and to put it both ungallantly and bluntly, would have made a great jailer. We live in the depths of the North Cornwall countryside next to her brother’s beef farm and are surrounded by fields. More pertinently although we are by no means ‘rich’, we are lucky to live in a cottage with, on three sides, reasonably large areas of grassland. But when he is taken out be her ‘to relieve himself’, she always puts him on a lead. I can’t get my head around that.
When I go outside to sit and read and take Russell with me, every few minutes she is shouting out of the window: ‘Where’s Russell, what’s he doing? You’ve got to keep an eye on him!’
Why? He’s a bloody dog. He’s mooching around. That’s what dog’s do. He was born about seven months ago and so, in human terms, is now a young lad. And that would explain why every time the front door is opened he is out like a shot. He’s not some old fart like me, he’s young and wants to explore. But no, when I’m not around he is kept indoors and watched over. And I can’t stand it. I can’t stand zoos and I can’t stand any animal caged up, whether in fact or metaphorically.
Yes, I think that old codger looking for ‘his dog’ among several thousand mangy straw dogs was a tad twp, but part of me completely understands his affection. And it is that part which sighs every time our Russell is treated like the inmate of a concentration camp (though, as always, I exaggerate a little). But it seems I am waging a losing battle.
Saturday, 1 August 2015
Cruise control? Who needs cruise control? Well, I don’t, but I got it anyway, for several long, boring miles. And arguing the toss with an 80-year-old Irishwoman while lost in France didn’t help much
I promised more ‘ironies’, but in fact what I am about to retail is not quite ‘an irony’, more a ridiculous situation which had me baffled for nigh-on half an hour.
We were on our way back from a concert at a chateau we had not visited before but which coincidentally was very close to a convalescent home in the country south of Bordeaux where my aunt had stayed for a few weeks after having a knee operation. This made her think she was a little familiar with the area and knew how to get back home again. She didn’t.
Instead of following the way we had come, which would have involved turning left at the chateau entrance, we turned right and - of this I’m quite certain - we were heading south and in the right direction. Then several minutes later something very odd happened: the car seemed to lose power and try as I might I could not get it to go faster than 25mph (the speedometer showed just under 45kph).
I thought there was some kind of blockage in the petrol system, so slowed down, changed down and accelerated into something rather like what is called an ‘Italian tune-up’. That seem to do the trick because in second from about 10mph acceleration was fine. Then at around 25mph everything just seemed to shut down and I just couldn’t go any faster.
My aunt who knows as much about cars as I do about the finer points of French grammar was for reconciling us to travelling that slowly. I wasn’t and got more and more frustrated by not knowing what was going on.
‘Does this car have some kind of cruise control?’ I asked her.
‘What’s cruise control?’ she replied.
‘It’s a way of setting your car to travel no more than a certain speed.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’ she asked.
‘Well, in some ways it can be a useful facility, if, for example, you don’t want to break the speed limit and are afraid of being caught by a speed camera.
‘All you have to do is stick to the speed limit,’ she pointed out.
‘But sometimes you go over it a little by accident.’
‘Well, you should just be more careful.’
‘Of course, you should,’ I agreed (trying to keep the frustration with the turn of conversation out of my voice. She is 81 and I was her guest, after all, and I couldn’t very well tell her to get a grip). ‘But it does sometimes happen. You don’t mean to, but you are driving a little too fast and you are caught speeding.’
‘Well, then you’ve got no excuse, you should just be more careful.’
‘But even though some people are more careful, it can happen, so setting a cruise control to a certain speed to ensure you don’t go over that speed can be very useful.’
‘I don’t think it’s at all useful and I can’t see why anyone would need one.’
I tried a different tack. ‘OK, but aside from that, have you heard Pierre [her husband] mention that this car has cruise control?’
‘Why would it have cruise control?’
‘I don’t know, but if it did, have you heard him refer to it?’
‘But I can’t see the point?’
And so on. And on and on and on for many more minutes and, as we were tootling along at just 25mph, for many more miles. In all this time I was touching this, pressing that, pulling this to see if I could find where the cruise control - if indeed the car had one - was located.
The road was very straight (Napoleon had many very straight roads built along which he could march his armies) and we passed several signposts, including one for Saucats, which prompted my aunt to inform me we were on the right road. But we weren’t, and soon we had no idea where we were which frustrated me as much as tootling along at a snail’s pace.
Then, for no very good reason could think of I took out my iPhone and launched the compass to find that instead of travelling south as we should have been doing, we were travelling due north. I told my aunt and suggested we about-turn.
‘We’ll get somewhere soon,’ she told me.
‘But we’re driving in the wrong direction.’
‘But we’ll get somewhere soon.’
‘Yes, but somewhere in the opposite direction we want to go. If we turn around, we’ll also get somewhere soon, but at least we know we are heading in the right direction.’
She was having none of it, and knowing myself well and knowing that, frustrated I am apt to be a little more direct than some people can handle, I decided to keep schtumm and do what she asked. And it was at this point that I discovered - I had been fiddling around discovering what I could while we proceeded - that the car did indeed have cruise control and, even better, how to switch it off. So finally we were able to get up to a reasonable speed but by this point we were on the outskirts of Bordeaux, about 20 miles due north from where we wanted to be.
We carried on, still due north, until we spotted a sign for the Arcachon to Bordeaux motorway. (Arcachon is on the Atlantic coast due west of where we were, Bordeaux was due east. Where ideally we wanted to be was due south. And that be at least 45 minutes ago.) We eventually arrived home about an hour later than we should have done but at least I had established that that particular model of Peugeot did have cruise control even though my elderly Irish aunt considered it a facitilty worse than useless.
. . .
It wasn’t that night, but the following night at somewhere called the Chateau de France that I came across Les Tromano, made up of brothers Yorrick and Daniel Troman, on violin and accordion, and double bass player Yann Dubost, and boy were they a find. They play everything from Prokoviev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky to kletzmer and if you like that kind of musis - I DO - you would like Les Tromano. I’ve bought a CD and upload some tracks in the next few days.
We were on our way back from a concert at a chateau we had not visited before but which coincidentally was very close to a convalescent home in the country south of Bordeaux where my aunt had stayed for a few weeks after having a knee operation. This made her think she was a little familiar with the area and knew how to get back home again. She didn’t.
Instead of following the way we had come, which would have involved turning left at the chateau entrance, we turned right and - of this I’m quite certain - we were heading south and in the right direction. Then several minutes later something very odd happened: the car seemed to lose power and try as I might I could not get it to go faster than 25mph (the speedometer showed just under 45kph).
I thought there was some kind of blockage in the petrol system, so slowed down, changed down and accelerated into something rather like what is called an ‘Italian tune-up’. That seem to do the trick because in second from about 10mph acceleration was fine. Then at around 25mph everything just seemed to shut down and I just couldn’t go any faster.
My aunt who knows as much about cars as I do about the finer points of French grammar was for reconciling us to travelling that slowly. I wasn’t and got more and more frustrated by not knowing what was going on.
‘Does this car have some kind of cruise control?’ I asked her.
‘What’s cruise control?’ she replied.
‘It’s a way of setting your car to travel no more than a certain speed.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’ she asked.
‘Well, in some ways it can be a useful facility, if, for example, you don’t want to break the speed limit and are afraid of being caught by a speed camera.
‘All you have to do is stick to the speed limit,’ she pointed out.
‘But sometimes you go over it a little by accident.’
‘Well, you should just be more careful.’
‘Of course, you should,’ I agreed (trying to keep the frustration with the turn of conversation out of my voice. She is 81 and I was her guest, after all, and I couldn’t very well tell her to get a grip). ‘But it does sometimes happen. You don’t mean to, but you are driving a little too fast and you are caught speeding.’
‘Well, then you’ve got no excuse, you should just be more careful.’
‘But even though some people are more careful, it can happen, so setting a cruise control to a certain speed to ensure you don’t go over that speed can be very useful.’
‘I don’t think it’s at all useful and I can’t see why anyone would need one.’
I tried a different tack. ‘OK, but aside from that, have you heard Pierre [her husband] mention that this car has cruise control?’
‘Why would it have cruise control?’
‘I don’t know, but if it did, have you heard him refer to it?’
‘But I can’t see the point?’
And so on. And on and on and on for many more minutes and, as we were tootling along at just 25mph, for many more miles. In all this time I was touching this, pressing that, pulling this to see if I could find where the cruise control - if indeed the car had one - was located.
The road was very straight (Napoleon had many very straight roads built along which he could march his armies) and we passed several signposts, including one for Saucats, which prompted my aunt to inform me we were on the right road. But we weren’t, and soon we had no idea where we were which frustrated me as much as tootling along at a snail’s pace.
Then, for no very good reason could think of I took out my iPhone and launched the compass to find that instead of travelling south as we should have been doing, we were travelling due north. I told my aunt and suggested we about-turn.
‘We’ll get somewhere soon,’ she told me.
‘But we’re driving in the wrong direction.’
‘But we’ll get somewhere soon.’
‘Yes, but somewhere in the opposite direction we want to go. If we turn around, we’ll also get somewhere soon, but at least we know we are heading in the right direction.’
She was having none of it, and knowing myself well and knowing that, frustrated I am apt to be a little more direct than some people can handle, I decided to keep schtumm and do what she asked. And it was at this point that I discovered - I had been fiddling around discovering what I could while we proceeded - that the car did indeed have cruise control and, even better, how to switch it off. So finally we were able to get up to a reasonable speed but by this point we were on the outskirts of Bordeaux, about 20 miles due north from where we wanted to be.
We carried on, still due north, until we spotted a sign for the Arcachon to Bordeaux motorway. (Arcachon is on the Atlantic coast due west of where we were, Bordeaux was due east. Where ideally we wanted to be was due south. And that be at least 45 minutes ago.) We eventually arrived home about an hour later than we should have done but at least I had established that that particular model of Peugeot did have cruise control even though my elderly Irish aunt considered it a facitilty worse than useless.
. . .
It wasn’t that night, but the following night at somewhere called the Chateau de France that I came across Les Tromano, made up of brothers Yorrick and Daniel Troman, on violin and accordion, and double bass player Yann Dubost, and boy were they a find. They play everything from Prokoviev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky to kletzmer and if you like that kind of musis - I DO - you would like Les Tromano. I’ve bought a CD and upload some tracks in the next few days.
Friday, 31 July 2015
An irony and there will be more once I get my act together and survive easyjet flight 5020 from Bordeaux to Londres
If I were not acquainted with irony – and I am, we are good friends of long standing – what has been going on today would have been a good introduction.
This was my fourth, possibly even my fifth, stay in Illats accompanying my elderly step-aunt to various concerts held in chateaux hereabouts and departing and flying home has always followed the same routine: train from Cerons, a few miles from where she lives, then the Navette bus from the Gare de St Jean to Bordeaux airport, then the flight home with Easyjet. Today’s journey should have been no different except that when I checked the rail timetable to make sure I hadn’t ‘misremembered’ (©Hillary Rodham Clinton) what time my train was and checked the timetable of the Navette, I realised that if I caught the 9.50 from Cerons as planned, I would get to the airport to make my way through security just in time to miss the plane by about ten minutes. And the rail timetable listed no earlier train except one leaving Cerons at 6.50 (far, far to early for anyone to do anyting remotely useful).
When I told my aunt, she said she would drive me to the airport. As she has, in the past nine months, had a knee operation and surgery to cure ‘a woman’s problem’, I was reluctant but could see no alternative. Then it struck me that I might be able to catch a train from Lango, several miles further away than Cerons, but a far better option of my aunt.
There a train departed for Bordeaux at 8.44. We set off on the 20 minute journey to Langon from Illats just before 8pm and arrived with ample time to spare and I caught the train (which was a little late) and that should have been that. But I was very surprised when the very next stop, barely five minutes down the line to Bordeaux was bloody Cerons. So I could have caught the same train and spared my aunt a little hassle. I have since re-checked the timetable I originally looked at and that departure is not listed. But I have also checked the official SNCF timetable and it is.
Not much of an irony, you might now be telling yourselves, and what is this crud banging on about? Well, it is this: not only did I, unlike previously when ‘security’ was jam-packed with Brits in shorts with red legs and their breeds and the whole experience took what seemed like hours – not, only did I breeze through this time, but the bloody flight, due to leave at 12.05 is fucking ‘delayed’. And no one knows until when. So I could have stuck to the original plan with ease.
This was my fourth, possibly even my fifth, stay in Illats accompanying my elderly step-aunt to various concerts held in chateaux hereabouts and departing and flying home has always followed the same routine: train from Cerons, a few miles from where she lives, then the Navette bus from the Gare de St Jean to Bordeaux airport, then the flight home with Easyjet. Today’s journey should have been no different except that when I checked the rail timetable to make sure I hadn’t ‘misremembered’ (©Hillary Rodham Clinton) what time my train was and checked the timetable of the Navette, I realised that if I caught the 9.50 from Cerons as planned, I would get to the airport to make my way through security just in time to miss the plane by about ten minutes. And the rail timetable listed no earlier train except one leaving Cerons at 6.50 (far, far to early for anyone to do anyting remotely useful).
When I told my aunt, she said she would drive me to the airport. As she has, in the past nine months, had a knee operation and surgery to cure ‘a woman’s problem’, I was reluctant but could see no alternative. Then it struck me that I might be able to catch a train from Lango, several miles further away than Cerons, but a far better option of my aunt.
There a train departed for Bordeaux at 8.44. We set off on the 20 minute journey to Langon from Illats just before 8pm and arrived with ample time to spare and I caught the train (which was a little late) and that should have been that. But I was very surprised when the very next stop, barely five minutes down the line to Bordeaux was bloody Cerons. So I could have caught the same train and spared my aunt a little hassle. I have since re-checked the timetable I originally looked at and that departure is not listed. But I have also checked the official SNCF timetable and it is.
Not much of an irony, you might now be telling yourselves, and what is this crud banging on about? Well, it is this: not only did I, unlike previously when ‘security’ was jam-packed with Brits in shorts with red legs and their breeds and the whole experience took what seemed like hours – not, only did I breeze through this time, but the bloody flight, due to leave at 12.05 is fucking ‘delayed’. And no one knows until when. So I could have stuck to the original plan with ease.
Saturday, 25 July 2015
Who was Alroy Kear? Well, while you’re finding out, let me tell you about my fourth culture vulture visit to south-west France
Who was Alroy Kear?
Well, if I’m not 100pc certain, I’m at least 99.9pc certain that no one knows what they hell I’m on about. But I do, and in this case that’s all that matters.
. . .
‘Who’s paying for this lunch?’
‘Well, if we don’t publish you, we are. If we do, you will be.’
I had been warned and I appreciated my companion’s candour. I told her that I wasn’t very hungry and ordered the pasta tuna. It had a rather more impressive name on the menu but I know pasta tuna when pasta tuna is offered.
‘Red or white?’
‘Well, as I’m having tuna I suppose it should be the white. And just a glass, please.’
She smiled, the smile of a professional who had eaten many such lunches.
‘Don’t stint yourself. I’ve got little on this afternoon and I’m off tomorrow and who knows, we’ll probably not publish you, so go for it. We might as well have a bottle. I could do with more than a glass. Are you going to have a starter? I am.
I wasn’t persuaded, but all in all this wasn’t my shout. I ordered a starter. Of every book published, nine out of ten are non-fiction. Of every book of fiction published nine out of ten make no money. Of every book of fiction considered for publication another nine or ninety or nine hundred or quite possibly nine thousand submitted are ignored as just so much dreck. So, whether I would be footing the bill for lunch or not, I had so far got just a little further than most. A little. Not much. My companion, a woman in her forties who had her charms once I had finished my first glass and was well into my second, knew her job.
‘You’ve called your novel Who Was Alroy Kear? Why, exactly?’
‘Are you familiar with the name?’
‘No.’
I began to explain. ‘He’s a fictional character invented by. . .’
‘Well, I don’t suppose it matters much, and be ready for marketing to insist on another title if they don’t like it. I should tell you that it’s a hard market and it’s getting harder every year, and what they say goes. What’s your story about?’
‘Have you read it’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t, no, but don’t let that bother you, we have some very good editors and they have, and if they think there’s something in it for us, if they think it has possibilities . . .’
She trailed off. ‘Who do you read?’
‘All sorts,’ I told her.
‘Well, all sorts doesn’t help much, does it? Have you read any Ooja Kanago or Paul Moore?’
‘No.’
‘Well, they’re selling very well at the moment and it’s the kind of thing we’re looking for. Are you gay?’
‘No. Should I be?’
‘No, not really, but it does seem to help, though marketing won’t insist, of course.’
Her mobile rang.
‘Sorry, I’ve got to take this.’ She answered. ‘Where are you? Well, don’t bother with that now, I’m quite busy. What is it?’ The other party spoke. She replied. ‘Well, she has got one down at the cottage and apparently the broadband is on again. And if it isn’t she’ll just have to live with it. Is Julian coming or staying up in London with Sasha?’ The other party spoke. ‘Well, tell him to make his mind up. Anyway, can we do this another time, I’m in a meeting. I’ll ring you at four. Oh, and I wouldn’t mind getting away at five.’ She ended her call.
‘Sorry about that. What was I saying?’
‘You asked me if I was gay.’
‘And are you?’
‘No. But my brother is.’
‘Well, that’s neither here nor there, is it.’
. . .
Illats, day three.
This is, I think, my fourth annual trek to this neck of the woods in what is sometimes called Aquitane, sometimes Les Landes and sometimes just Bordeaux, by which folk who call it that (as I do when people ask ‘where are you going to in France) mean the area south of the city which is also called Bordeaux. I come to accompany my aunt – my stepmother’s sister, but I think of here as my aunt – to a series of concerts put on by various chateaux as part of the Rencontres Musicales Internationales des Graves (which means Very Serious Musical Encounters, though as I don’t speak any French – as I ‘have no French’ – I might well have got that a little wrong).
Regular readers of this ‘ere blog might be familiar with my annual excursions to this part of France at this time of year, and I must add that I enjoy them a lot in as far as although I’m a really, really cool cat who doesn’t only like jazz but J Blackfoot, Alexander O’Neal, Lisa Ekdahl, Pink and Pretty Reckless (none too contemporary, I’m afraid), I also like almost all kinds of classical music except sodding German romantic stuff from the mid to late 19th century, which, as I get older makes me feel like puking rather quicker than a pound of full-cream fudge.
The first concert was on Thursday at the Chateau Latour-Martillac, and on the bill – is it OK to use the phrase ‘on the bill’ when talking about classical music? – a sonata for violin and piano by a Russian call Anton Tanonov, Brahms second string quintet and finally the ‘concert’ for piano and string quartet by Ernest Chausson, a chap who is apparently very well-known except by me. The Tanonov piece, very modern and very squeaky, was fair enough and although I have a strange liking for what I was once told is often called ‘squeaky gate music’, it didn’t do a great deal for me, though I didn’t hate it either. The Brahms, a new one on me, I liked. And I also like the Chausson. (Incidentally, he died rather young, at 44, in a bicycle accident – he rode into a wall. True – look it up.)
Last night’s concert, though was something else. It was at the Chateau Doms, just down the road in Portets, and all three pieces were memorable. The first, by a Uri Brener was the kind of squeaky gate music I can’t get enough of (as opposed to Mr Tanonov’s and don’t ask me what I preferred the one to the other, but I did).
Then came Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G Minor, opus 57, and that, dear friends, was spot-on. It sounds daft to put it that way, and again I’m told it’s very ‘well-known’ but not by me, but I’m
glad I came across it and have already bought it from Amazon. Finally, we got Schubert’s string quartet Death And the Maiden, which I have heard before several times but don’t ever mind hearing again. (Sad, sad note: just looked it up on Wikipedia and it seems he wrote it after he came out of a serious illness and realised he was dying so, you know, blah, blah. Altogether now: aahh!, though I trust folk won’t be quite as viciously flippant when the time comes for me to knock, knock, knock on Heaven’s door.)
Apart from that I’m enjoying good food and pleasant weather. Whereas, it seems Old Blighty has already had its two and a half days of fine weather this summer, here in the South-West of France the temperature is warm, in the mid-twenties, and sunny. They had just emerged from a heatwave the day before I arrived and we’re told another heatwave is on its way, but I’ll cope with that as and when. Pip, pip.
Oh, I hope you enjoy the snippet I started this entry off with. With a bit of luck – i.e. hard work – there’s another 69,410 words to go. And I do actually plan to call it Who Was Alroy Kear?, though marketing might well have other ideas. (Alroy Kear? Look it up. It is obscurely relevant, though you will never guess how and why.)
. . .
‘Who’s paying for this lunch?’
‘Well, if we don’t publish you, we are. If we do, you will be.’
I had been warned and I appreciated my companion’s candour. I told her that I wasn’t very hungry and ordered the pasta tuna. It had a rather more impressive name on the menu but I know pasta tuna when pasta tuna is offered.
‘Red or white?’
‘Well, as I’m having tuna I suppose it should be the white. And just a glass, please.’
She smiled, the smile of a professional who had eaten many such lunches.
‘Don’t stint yourself. I’ve got little on this afternoon and I’m off tomorrow and who knows, we’ll probably not publish you, so go for it. We might as well have a bottle. I could do with more than a glass. Are you going to have a starter? I am.
I wasn’t persuaded, but all in all this wasn’t my shout. I ordered a starter. Of every book published, nine out of ten are non-fiction. Of every book of fiction published nine out of ten make no money. Of every book of fiction considered for publication another nine or ninety or nine hundred or quite possibly nine thousand submitted are ignored as just so much dreck. So, whether I would be footing the bill for lunch or not, I had so far got just a little further than most. A little. Not much. My companion, a woman in her forties who had her charms once I had finished my first glass and was well into my second, knew her job.
‘You’ve called your novel Who Was Alroy Kear? Why, exactly?’
‘Are you familiar with the name?’
‘No.’
I began to explain. ‘He’s a fictional character invented by. . .’
‘Well, I don’t suppose it matters much, and be ready for marketing to insist on another title if they don’t like it. I should tell you that it’s a hard market and it’s getting harder every year, and what they say goes. What’s your story about?’
‘Have you read it’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t, no, but don’t let that bother you, we have some very good editors and they have, and if they think there’s something in it for us, if they think it has possibilities . . .’
She trailed off. ‘Who do you read?’
‘All sorts,’ I told her.
‘Well, all sorts doesn’t help much, does it? Have you read any Ooja Kanago or Paul Moore?’
‘No.’
‘Well, they’re selling very well at the moment and it’s the kind of thing we’re looking for. Are you gay?’
‘No. Should I be?’
‘No, not really, but it does seem to help, though marketing won’t insist, of course.’
Her mobile rang.
‘Sorry, I’ve got to take this.’ She answered. ‘Where are you? Well, don’t bother with that now, I’m quite busy. What is it?’ The other party spoke. She replied. ‘Well, she has got one down at the cottage and apparently the broadband is on again. And if it isn’t she’ll just have to live with it. Is Julian coming or staying up in London with Sasha?’ The other party spoke. ‘Well, tell him to make his mind up. Anyway, can we do this another time, I’m in a meeting. I’ll ring you at four. Oh, and I wouldn’t mind getting away at five.’ She ended her call.
‘Sorry about that. What was I saying?’
‘You asked me if I was gay.’
‘And are you?’
‘No. But my brother is.’
‘Well, that’s neither here nor there, is it.’
. . .
Illats, day three.
This is, I think, my fourth annual trek to this neck of the woods in what is sometimes called Aquitane, sometimes Les Landes and sometimes just Bordeaux, by which folk who call it that (as I do when people ask ‘where are you going to in France) mean the area south of the city which is also called Bordeaux. I come to accompany my aunt – my stepmother’s sister, but I think of here as my aunt – to a series of concerts put on by various chateaux as part of the Rencontres Musicales Internationales des Graves (which means Very Serious Musical Encounters, though as I don’t speak any French – as I ‘have no French’ – I might well have got that a little wrong).
Regular readers of this ‘ere blog might be familiar with my annual excursions to this part of France at this time of year, and I must add that I enjoy them a lot in as far as although I’m a really, really cool cat who doesn’t only like jazz but J Blackfoot, Alexander O’Neal, Lisa Ekdahl, Pink and Pretty Reckless (none too contemporary, I’m afraid), I also like almost all kinds of classical music except sodding German romantic stuff from the mid to late 19th century, which, as I get older makes me feel like puking rather quicker than a pound of full-cream fudge.
The first concert was on Thursday at the Chateau Latour-Martillac, and on the bill – is it OK to use the phrase ‘on the bill’ when talking about classical music? – a sonata for violin and piano by a Russian call Anton Tanonov, Brahms second string quintet and finally the ‘concert’ for piano and string quartet by Ernest Chausson, a chap who is apparently very well-known except by me. The Tanonov piece, very modern and very squeaky, was fair enough and although I have a strange liking for what I was once told is often called ‘squeaky gate music’, it didn’t do a great deal for me, though I didn’t hate it either. The Brahms, a new one on me, I liked. And I also like the Chausson. (Incidentally, he died rather young, at 44, in a bicycle accident – he rode into a wall. True – look it up.)
Last night’s concert, though was something else. It was at the Chateau Doms, just down the road in Portets, and all three pieces were memorable. The first, by a Uri Brener was the kind of squeaky gate music I can’t get enough of (as opposed to Mr Tanonov’s and don’t ask me what I preferred the one to the other, but I did).
Then came Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G Minor, opus 57, and that, dear friends, was spot-on. It sounds daft to put it that way, and again I’m told it’s very ‘well-known’ but not by me, but I’m
glad I came across it and have already bought it from Amazon. Finally, we got Schubert’s string quartet Death And the Maiden, which I have heard before several times but don’t ever mind hearing again. (Sad, sad note: just looked it up on Wikipedia and it seems he wrote it after he came out of a serious illness and realised he was dying so, you know, blah, blah. Altogether now: aahh!, though I trust folk won’t be quite as viciously flippant when the time comes for me to knock, knock, knock on Heaven’s door.)
Apart from that I’m enjoying good food and pleasant weather. Whereas, it seems Old Blighty has already had its two and a half days of fine weather this summer, here in the South-West of France the temperature is warm, in the mid-twenties, and sunny. They had just emerged from a heatwave the day before I arrived and we’re told another heatwave is on its way, but I’ll cope with that as and when. Pip, pip.
Oh, I hope you enjoy the snippet I started this entry off with. With a bit of luck – i.e. hard work – there’s another 69,410 words to go. And I do actually plan to call it Who Was Alroy Kear?, though marketing might well have other ideas. (Alroy Kear? Look it up. It is obscurely relevant, though you will never guess how and why.)
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