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Posts tagged ‘Grenoble’

Mar 7

122 Comments

Visions of happiness

In the interests of keeping things lighthearted, particularly when the going has been a little less polished and serene than I might have liked, I have often wise-cracked that there has clearly been a dreadful mistake and that I am in fact supposed to be living a different life.  Usually the whimsy life referred to contains a palatial home and whatever accoutrements the unfortunate recipient of my frolicking wit cares to embellish it with.  In fact it is not at all uncommon for me to help myself to a counterfeit life just for the helluvit and to make fictional daydreaming sugar whatever the reality of the bitter medicinal pill of the moment is.  It is fair to comment that in my own make-believe there is much detail in the sketch.  Details like tall columns and ornate plaster-work and rooms big enough to dance in.   It’s a trifling and inoffensive affectation.  Harmless, I am.  Occasionally deluded but entirely inoccuous.

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Now imagine this, if you will.   When I knew for certain sure that we would be spending the first six months of this year in Grenoble, a city we visit often and of which I am fond as one is fond of a rather nice passing acquaintance – that person who always seems so cordial and kind and whom you don’t really know at all but with whom you are certain you could be the bosomest of buddies given the chance.  That was Grenoble for me …. a hint of something possible and tantalising.  So once I knew we would be here, my reverie started in earnest.

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The rapidly gilded fantasy had some concrete and real decisions attached.  We wanted to live right in the middle of town to get under the skin of the city at it’s heart, not at it’s suburban fingertips and we wanted to live in an old building.  Around this time, as my frenzy of searching for flats heltered and skeltered hither and thither bouncing round the internet like a manic squashball I came across a place which prompted me to forward the detail to the long-suffering Husband with Two Brains with the covering note ‘Please can we have this one?  If you let us have this one I will live with no furniture and will exist on a diet of dust and air for the whole six months.  I actually will.  So please please please say  we can’.  The Brains responded with the email equivalent of a non-commital smile and nod.

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When we arrived in Grenoble just before Christmas to arrange viewings through the Institute that HB2 is working with, The Director (a fellow I have always liked) made a cool and frankly rather too razor-sharp exit saying that renting places in Grenoble is like extracting well-rooted teeth with no anaesthetic and sweetly wishing us well as he fled for the hills.  The unfortunate and delightfully stoic young assistant assigned to us, started to work through our list of properties.  She arranged two viewings that afternoon and two the next morning  The first place, the top floor of an historic monument facing l’ancien Palais du Parliament, was love at first sight, albeit unfinished.  The second would certainly do with a lovely double aspect salon and excellent location.  I should explain two things at this point.  The first is that we are experienced at renting in France.  Here, you will normally sign a lease for three years after which you can extend for a further three or six years.  The rights remain with the tenant – the landlord can’t kick you out but you can terminate with notice at any time.  That is hugely over-simplified but you get the gist.  So apartment number two was shown to us by a  young estate agent who seemed incapable of standing up straight but favoured leaning provocatively on any available solid object of sufficient height, facial expression impassively composed somewhere between nonchalant and fashionably bored.   The deep inpenetrably dark eyes of this glacially chic individual flickered with contempt when we explained that we only wanted the place for six months (something that in the UK a landlord would be generally delighted to bite your hand off for, particularly when the agreement will be with an institute of standing in the city meaning no risk at all on the landlord) …. six months?  No.  That absolute, resolute  ‘non’  beloved of the French when there is positively no wiggle room, no negotiation and it’s been a pleasure, bonne journée.  Never mind.  We still have number one and that was our favourite.  Or do we?  The assistant called the agent who escalated her to the manager and the manager called the landlord to confirm that it would be ready mid-January and with the lovely early Christmas present that they had secured good tenants through a venerable institute for six months thereby neatly bypassing the winter months when rentals are lean in the city and dropping them into prime renter-reaping territory in mid-summer.   And there was that word again ‘non’ … not because they didn’t want us for 6 months but because they were unsure that they could get the tiny amount of work required to complete the flat done before …. March.

The following morning we had number three, a sprawling loft inhabited by a seemingly endless cascade of student girls and filled, predictably with all the necessary and un-necessary detritus of girlie-ness which took me ricocheting back to the years and seemingly endless years of four daughters and one bathroom and no-one ever in a matching pair of socks.  I put my bravest mummy face on, Two Brains walked round with a visible and clearly disgusting smell under his fine Gaelic nose.  I was stoically convinced that it could work, that once the girls had erradicated the landfill and revealed the space that I could get a certain urban edgy vibe going in this place and release my thinly veiled inner bohemian on the unsuspecting Grenoblois population.  And I might have continued in this vein were it not for  the casual statement by head girl that the broken door to the building had been like it for months but the landlord was tired of fixing it so he’d decided not to repair it ever again.  Now don’t get me wrong, I can fantasise about a bit of gritty living, indeed I was at that very moment inventing  a bit of latterday Beatnicking but the idea of absolutely random anyone being able to walk into the place uninvited at absolutely random any time was not appetising in the slightest.  Really, not at all.  Oddly enough.   Number four was in a good location, a good building (Haussmannian) with high ceilings and lovely floors.  But compact.  Very very compact.  Particularly the shower with resplendent puce toilet squished next to it – the colour enhancing the fact that it was clearly extremely uncomfortable with it’s situation.   The cubicle was so small I am confident that I would have got wedged whilst washing and warbling and had to be prized out with grease-guns and crowbars by a team of jolly pompiers (firemen) thus making the wrong sort of headlines in le Dauphiné.  Or worse, le Monde and picked up and flashed round the world by Reuters.  I felt quite faint at this inevitable prospect and the place did not make the list.  Which left us with precisely no list and no choice but to drive to England for Christmas knowing that instead of planning removals we would be living out of a suitcase in a hotel at the start of January.

And so it was that at the dawn of 2017 we arrived back in Grenoble filled with the resolution that New Year’s inevitably ingender and fixing our determined chins, set about finding our perfect nest.  The valiant assistant made more phone calls working her way through the new list we had drawn up.  She netted three visits from six possible roosts and off we set to visit the first one.  I was filled with zealous hope for this one.  In the Quartier des Antiquaires the dossier showed a beautifully presented place with high ceilings and lovely floors and oozing appeal and charm.  We arrived on the nose of the appointed time and a waxy rather sallow skinned fellow opened the door.  He reeked, positively seeped from his every pore, of smoke and clearly not just cigarette smoke.  If you catch the fetid drift.  I am fairly certain that he never ventures outside and if he does it is certainly not in daylight.  His eyes were hollow and red rimmed and I am quietly confident that he had not seen this hour of the day in many a decade.  This was not an advertisement for spritzy healthy living.  The flat, as it turned out was quite hard to see being entirely rammed solid with his enormous volume of possessions.  In fact the place had the air that if you moved too quickly and caused the tiniest zephyr it would simply burst.  He told me happily that he and his wife were performance artists.  I wondered idly if this place were actually a set for one of their plays because it was like wandering through a hellish series of tableaux – you know those performances in several parts where you walk from set to set and are treated to seemingly disconnected installments that somehow in the minds of the creator make sense.  And you adopt that air of serene interest whilst all the while looking for an escape route.  That.  There are no doors you see, just a series of depositories for some of the most seriously cluttered clutter I have ever seen.  None of which has ever been cleaned.  I enquired politely if the kitchen furniture would be staying.  Which it wouldn’t.  This (and it is not at all uncommon in France) meant that the kitchen would consist of a space with a tap in it.  I didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed as my addled mind tried to find a way of making this Danté-on-dope-interior work for us.  I failed.  Had I succeeded and decided this was the one, I would now be going through the rigours of divorce – HB2’s expression was granite-set and distinctly unpretty.  As we left, the fellow invited us to his wife’s next performance.  I smiled and nodded and remembered that I have not the teensiest smidge of space in my schedule  for the next many aeons.

Which left us with two places to visit.  One of my favourite parts of Grenoble are les quais and the second place was on Quai de France which is historic and convenient albeit the other side of the river.  The call of water, a view of water has me every time so my hope-ometer was registering off the scale for this baby when we arrived early the following morning.  Do you see a pattern forming?   You are correct.  The pictures of this apartment must have been at least a decade old when, un-lived in, the owner had restored it and dressed it for the Estate Agents to lure people like us in.  Or not people like us actually …. this had been a co-location (flatshare) for years.  The young people were delightful but let’s be brutally frank with self …. I have children who are older than these bambini.  I am no longer content with student digs in fact I might venture that at my lofty age it could be construed as a teeny bit infra-dig.  That and the off-hand remark by the young man showing us around that despite having two bathrooms they only ever use one because the other one is dangerous.  The pompiers flashed through my mind again.  Will I ever find a place where I can make my ablutions without fear of torrid headlines or death or both in this city?

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The final place on Cours Jean Jaurès which is the main artery of Grenoble was lovely.  Honestly.  No catch.  It was delightful.  Good Belle-Epoque building (not Haussmannian but with views over those that make up the bold and bustling corners of the streets facing the river); high ceilings; shower that would not risk entombment every time I entered it, nor, the slightly bewildered agent assured me in that ‘humour her, she can’t help it, she’s foreign’ way  when asked, any other lurking dangers in the bathroom; fitted kitchen to include white goods (we have them but preferred not to have to move them if possible) and all in all a jolly good fit.  But of course we still had to traverse the, apparantly insurmountable, six months issue so we wanted another as back-up.

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Except there were no more choices.  Don’t get me wrong, the little hotel-appart was very comfortable but living in a space where swinging a cat even if we had one and thought that was the reasonable pastime of a sane person, was not in the plan for six months.  What to do?  The poor assistant was developing an unbecoming facial tic and I really didn’t want the guilt associated with this developing further into a full-blown twitch.   At this point, I suggested in the faintest of whispers that I actually knew that the place I had suggested we live in with no food nor furniture for six months was still available.  I let my sentence trail ephemerally into sweet silence and waited for the inevitable pounce of desperation. One.  Two.  Three …  Two Brains and The Assistant politely, and to my possible shame, predictably, obliged and later that afternoon, I walked through vast coaching doors into my own dream.  The ceilings are at least 13′ high with panelling and moulding and ceiling roses that would grace any fine born abode, pillars and a 65 foot hallway with lovely tiling, parquet floors and a kitchen sporting a piano.  No honestly a piano.  Un piano de cuisine is a range cooker.   This one is vintage if you take vintage to include sometime in, at a guess the early seventies.  I’m a sucker for a good cooker and this one has me smitten.  You can opt to take the gorgeous old elevator complete with pull-down highly polished wood seat on brass fittings, or glide up the lovely gently winding stone staircase.  The double front doors to the apartment are high, heavy, adorned with beautiful brasswork and so finely balanced that they seemingly float open and shut with the merest whisper of pressure.  The windows are floor to ceiling and open onto plant balconies, the internal doors mostly double have glazed panels to let the light flood the place.  But did I mention pillars?  Pillars!  It has beauteous ornate columns supporting it’s dizzingly high ceilings. The views from the front are of la Banque de France, itself a gorgeous, unmistakeably French, almost Chateauesque building.  The ground floor of the building also houses a bank so if I get bored with living my go-to daydream I can press reset and imagine myself Bonnie plotting with Clyde to pull off the heist of the century.  I could happily sport that beret ….

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I wafted around the place with a look of the contented Tigger when he had tried the haycorns and the thistles and the hunny and discovered that Roo’s strengthening medicine was actually what Tiggers are meant to eat.  In the same vein, Osyths are meant to live in this place for this six months.  Of this I am thoroughly certain.  In fact, I may chain myself to the fine vintage radiators on move-out day and go on hunger strike.  It is love.   In 1822 Stendhal noted in ‘On Love’ that ‘there are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.’   Welcome to my vision of happiness ….

PS:  There is learning in most everything if one is open to learning.  Some years ago and not of choice I lost most of what I owned.  All the things that I had moved and moved and moved with and which had enabled me to make each place that my daughters and I arrived in, a home in a jiffy.  What I now have is very little.  And it is not of any significant value.  Were it to be auctioned I imagine it might buy a bag of soggy chips but that is the sum of it.  There are some pretty things, there are my father’s plants, and of course there are books but what were always referred to as our ‘things’ are gone.  Most of what I have is second hand Ikea.  And here is the lesson.  I worried and worried that my skimpy collection would be ridiculous in this space.  I had japed about living with no furniture but I had serious misgivings that we would simply  look ludicrous.  As it transpires, when you have bones as beautiful as this place has you can artfully arrange a very few things (and I  speak as a magpie who may finally be embracing her suffocated inner minimalist going forward) and hey presto bongo … house beautiful.  Rather like the notion that Audrey Hepburn or Sophia Loren could wear a bin-bag and be elegantly alluring.  It turns out that it’s not a notion at all but rather it is a solid, unassailable truth.

And if you are wondering … the place that stole our hearts at the very start?  Is still under construction.  And the place that wouldn’t have us for six months?  Still to let.

Feb 22

108 Comments

Game, set and match

One of my favourite stories is ‘The Little Match Girl’.  Hans Christian Anderson’s achingly sad fable was corruptly used by me often when my daughter’s were growing up … I would tell them they were NOT poor little match girls when they were crying for something they perceived they needed more than anything in the whole wide world.  

Cold, lonely and scared, undernourished, ill-clad this little girl is dying and as her life degenerates to a flicker and whispers into death she strikes her matches for warmth and in their light she sees things that she wishes she had and amongst them her Granny, the only person who ever showed her love in her meagre little life, reaching out from her celestial place.    When her pathetic little frozen corpse is found in the morning she is smiling and the strangers that stumble upon her look at the matches round her and surmise that they know why she smiles – but of course …. she was cold and her matches made her warm so she died content.  None have the need nor the will to look beyond the obvious.  Speculate and instantly conclude is part of human nature.  We suspect that we know the answer but often the answer is not as we so skillfully deduced at all.

I give you a picture of the city I am living in taken a couple of days ago on a hike and looking down on the river which actually and genuinely IS that colour …. it is caused, I am told by the limestone which the mountains surrounding us are formed of.  When I first visited this area some years ago, I assumed there was a problem with chemicals.   Be careful who you damn without knowing all the damned facts!

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PS:  The title is a reference to the Weekly Photo Challenge this week labelled ‘A Good Match’ … my Game, Set and Match invokes three things in the picture – look closely now …. there’s the stadium where the Six Nations Rugby Game between France and Scotland was played just a couple of weeks ago and there again are three skyscrapers built for the 1968 Winter Olympics – they were designed to rotate slowly to give their super-human athletic tenants a constant and gracefully revolving 360° view of the city and the mountains that encircle it (in the end they remained still but the intent and bravado of the engineering, given that the city is gearing up to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of those Games next year is quite breathtaking) and finally a set of two bare trees, almost twins standing like naked watchkeepers over the city below.  And the city is …… over to you!

Here are all the other pictorial delights the piquant prompt has produced

And here, just because I can and because my tenuous title is a tennis call, is the masterly Jacques Tati in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday showing us how to serve with flare:

Feb 14

98 Comments

I asked the faithful light

Diu absentia … long in absence I have been.  I make no apologies.  It’s just a bit of life in my life.  Nothing dramatic.  No imprisonment, no hospitalisation nothing really to write home about.  Nothing to write about.  Except write I will.  It’s what I do.  Potted and neatly in a nutshell I have been moving rather a lot these past two months – US to England, England to France, France to England, England to France – friends and relics (stet) and Christmas with my most loved.  In Grenoble a temporary tiny flatlet with a view of snow topped mountains and on February 1 moving all I own from the flat in Cantal that I persist in calling home because it’s where I feel home, to our permanent Grenoble place-until-summer.  And beautiful it is.  But more of that another time.

No shadows lurking in my cupboard, nothing to make me startle and stare wide-eyed in horror, just life and settling and I will give you more of it, I promise … much more.

Shadows and startling seem to be the order of things in this world just now.  I rather feel that people are having to wear their most politically correct attire for dread of offending someone.  Anyone!  But I have always been the gal to stick her head above the trench and get it picked off by a beady eyed sniper far away out of sight on the other side of no-man’s land.  So I have a commentary on the world at large.  It is unhappy, it is uncomfortable and it is unpalatable for many.  For many others it is hopeful because it has been increasingly uncomfortable and unpalatable these umpteen years and they desire that there will be green shoots which might give they and their loved ones a future in what has been their shiny world rusted and corroded to dust.  Whether I agree or disagree with either side is neither here nor there but I  give a gentle reminder that alongside it’s bolder, brasher brother ‘Greed’, that ‘Fear’ is the greatest eroder of hope, of decency, of love that we, as humans  have in our armoury of weapons of mass self-destruction.  Try not to be led by fear.  Try instead, to be led by love.  It is, after all la fête de St Valentin who was beaten, stoned and decapitated under the rule of Claudius because, put simply, he believed that young lovers should be allowed to choose to marry as Christians.  Choice.  That’s the thing old Valentine was about and he suffered a particularly appalling death for his conviction.  In 269 AD.  Please let me trust that we have evolved and progressed in almost 2,000 years.  Just please.

My picture, which shows a rather perfect half (insert favourite cheese) moon, sentinel above a stone tower whose keepers can’t make their minds up whether to restore it’s authentic stone or leave it suffocated by the corset of concrete rendered upon it some aeons ago by zealous betterers, taken in the last 10 days in Gieres, a pretty commune just outside Grenoble it is offered for this week’s photo challenge captioned ‘Shadow’ (you can find the glories of the entire gallery here) – the moon’s shadow may not be apparent but it is there and, I would postulate, is not alarming at all.

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PS:  The title is taken from Cat Stevens’ (one of the enduring loves of my life) beautiful song ‘Moonshadow’.  Here are the lyrics and, as a bonus, a lovely clip of the man who stole a little of my heart in nineteen seventy-something singing it …. give them a read if you will – if I ever lose my mouth –  I won’t have to talk ….

Moonshadow

Oh, I’m bein’ followed by a moonshadow, moon shadow, moonshadow—
Leapin and hoppin’ on a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow—

And if I ever lose my hands, lose my plough, lose my land,
Oh if I ever lose my hands, Oh if I won’t have to work no more.

And if I ever lose my eyes, if my colours all run dry,
Yes if I ever lose my eyes, Oh if I won’t have to cry no more.

Oh, I’m bein’ followed by a moonshadow, moon shadow, moonshadow—
Leapin and hoppin’ on a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow—

And if I ever lose my legs, I won’t moan, and I won’t beg,
Yes if I ever lose my legs, Oh if I won’t have to walk no more.

And if I ever lose my mouth, all my teeth, north and south,
Yes if I ever lose my mouth, Oh if I won’t have to talk…

Did it take long to find me? I asked the faithful light.
Did it take long to find me? And are you gonna stay the night?

Cat Stevens

Jul 7

99 Comments

Two Lymes and a Lemon

In the words of Cyril Raymond to Celia Johnson at the end of ‘Brief Encounter’  ‘you’ve been a long, long way away’ – I won’t flatter myself with his next line ‘thank you for coming back to me’ but I have been a long way away and I’m very much afraid that I HAVE come back to you ….

It’s been a bit of a saga so here is a précis before I dive back into stories of house hunts and refurbishments and hikes (though one does figure here) and generally half-baked meanderings.

Here goes:

  1. June 17th The Two Brained one is diagnosed with Lyme Disease after breaking out in purple patches all over his normally unblemished body.
  2. June 19th He whisks me by circuitous route, lest I guess the ultimate destination, to France.  Grenoble to be precise.  You may remember I have a particular affection for Grenoble
  3. June 21st To the courthouse …. I’m not in the dock and neither is he but I do have another installment for my book ‘The Lying Cheating Lives of Others’ and there will be more of that in later blog posts – a road yet to be trodden but one that I think y’all might enjoy
  4. June 22nd – home to our little nest in Northern Cantal for our Wedding Anniversary.  There is nothing nicer than to be in the village we were married in three years ago drinking a toast ‘à la notre’ in jolly nice French champagne
  5. June 23rd – up early and on the road to Marcolès to find out what progress on the house.   There is progress but it would be wrong of me to spoil the surprise so I will leave you in suspenders til the next installment
  6. June 25th – back to Lyon to drop off car and take a flight.  HB² is confident that a) I love surprises so will not look at my ticket b) I can’t actually see it without my glasses and c) I’m so excited that I will miss the only announcement for our flight.  Therefore I board a plane not knowing where I am bound
  7. June 26th – I wake up in Edinburgh, a city I know quite well, where my grandmother was married in 1918 and where I hounded my elder brother when he was doing his PhD because I could and mainly because he had a ready supply of male friends for the 18 year old me to make cow-eyes at.
  8. June 27th – I pick up a call from my vet who is boarding The Bean.  The words ‘there is nothing to worry about, but ….’ instantly make me worried.  A lot worried.  Because it turns out that The Small But Feisty one has also got Lyme.  Be still my pounding heart.  At least she is in the right place and they say she is responding well to treatment.
  9. June 29th – We decide to walk up Arthur’s Seat.  This is an extinct volcano within the city.  My aforementioned and extremely long-suffering brother lived in a very pretty district at it’s foot and we walked up often.  Actually he used to run it.  At his wedding his best man’s speech began ‘I first suspected that my flatmate might be mad when he asked the way to Arthur’s Seat for a run on a bitterly cold, wet and windy day…. I showed him and some time later I realised it wasn’t a case of might be mad,  he clearly was mad as he set off down the lane in a storm with a rucksack full of boulders on his back’.  He is still that same animal.  In those days there were a few walkers some with dogs and that was about it.  Today it teems with tourists making their way up, taking selfies and mostly wearing entirely unsuitable footwear (flip flops, fashion sandals, even the odd pair of heels) for what is a moderate hike up hill-paths rather than pavements.  We took the road less travelled and benefited from stunning views unencumbered by the masses.  The German girls hogging the peak did move over when I utilised my famed loud and I don’t care who knows it, voice and we duly stood for a moment or two before setting off down again.  All was well and I was lost in thought (mostly quite bitchy thoughts about the unsuitable nature of other people’s footwear) until almost at the bottom, not on a remotely steep bit, I slipped on shail and heard an audible crack.  The crack was nothing to my blood-curdling bellows and the air took on a blue hue as I cursed my way thorugh the early moments of what is actually a severe high ankle sprain coupled with 90% tear to the anterior calf muscle.  I must thank the lovely man from Canada who stopped to help The Brains wrestle me to my feet, the equally lovely café who served delectable lime and coconut cake (I was in shock – I needed sugar) and the wonderful nurse in Minor Injuries at the Western General Hospital.  Later as I limped into a taxi my husband asked how I felt about the last bit of his surprise – did I think I could manage it.  Could I?  I would walk through the fires of a spewing live volcano to do what he had in mind.
  10. June 30th – Two trains to Liverpool for lunch with youngest daughter and two more to Oxford to stay two nights with my mother who had one last surprise – my younger brother flown in from Bahrain to spend an evening with his big sister.   In  life, the real luxuries are the little things.  The thoughtfulness of my husband, the opportunity to see some of my family.  Secrets and lies can be quite beautiful – four of the most precious people in my world kept them and there is no sin in that.
  11. July 2nd – we collect the delighted but subdued tiny dog from her Boarding Vet.  She has anti-biotics and is making some progress.  Lyme Disease is a nasty nasty thing – sometimes, it isn’t easy being Bean.

So there you have it Two Lymes and a Lemon.  Here are some nice pictures from the Scottish leg of my odyssey and afterwards I will treat you to a PS:

The Church where my Granny was married in 1918

The promised and entirely necessary PS:  Yesterday, I visited my lovely Cambridge doctor for a formal verdict on my leg.  He sympathised with Two Brains having to live with with a caged and beligerent tigress with cabin fever and asked how he is doing (he is a specialist in infectious diseases so had been asked for his opinion when The Brains presented with what appeared to be Lyme).  He commented that it was remarkable that HB² had been running the morning of his diagnosis  with Lyme.  I explained that our daughters and others are convinced he is, in fact, one of The  Men in Black.  The doctor seemed spookily content to agree ….

And for those unfamiliar with the achingly heartrending last scene of ‘Brief Encounter’ – here it is:

Feb 16

55 Comments

If it is not indigestion it must be gratitude

I think it was Voltaire who said ‘Appreciation is a wonderful thing.  It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well’.  Today I have Terry at Spearfruit to thank for nominating me for a Blogger Appreciation Award.  Terry writes every day and is gradually piecing together for us his past, his present and his future.  He has a very precise approach to telling his story.  He has planned out rigidly what to divulge and when and runs separate linear threads that are gradually knitting and fusing to reveal his tapestry.  It is the polar opposite of my own scattergun style and it is hugely engaging – I would encourage you to go and visit him … he’s a keeper.  Actually I also need to thank Terry for the recent revelation that his name is Terry.  Prior to this, when interacting I never quite knew whether it was etiquette to shorten him to Spear.  Or Fruit.  Or whether, out of politeness I needed to call him Mr Spearfruit.  In seriousness, he has battled multiple issues and continues to have rather radical bumps thrown into his path and he is genuinely inspiring.  He also shares the music that has patterned his life which I see as an extra perk (you will gather he has taste.  If he didn’t the perk would be a punishment).  And I appreciate him which means that his journey belongs to me in some way too.   I am enriched.

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The rules of engagement for this award are very simple (which can only be a good thing).  You thank, you tell something positive about yourself and you suggest and notify as many bloggers as you wish to that you are passing the wand or cudgel depending on your personal style, to them.

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Having thanked Terry, therefore, I need to write something positive about me:

Like many, I find it hard to write about me.  Even though I refer to myself as Little Miss Me, Me, Me I’m not really comfortable banging on about self – I find other’s stories much more compelling and I am a shameless Pinocchio nosing around for the anecdote sitting in the café, passing me on the street, simply living a life.

So instead I will share the wisdom of a friend many years ago ‘find the purpose in the way things are’ …. he said it to me at a particularly bleak time in my life when pushing water up a hill and sticking needles in my own eyes seemed infinitely preferable to the status quo.  And I wanted to thump him.  But being  non-violent, I chose instead to quietly niggle away at the statement and you know what?  There is always a flip side.  Always a positive to that negative.  As Oscar Wilde said in his poignant and tragic ‘The Portrait of Dorian Grey’ ‘behind every exquisite thing that existed is a tragedy’.  And that’s  another personal positive – people do genuinely ask if I keep a portrait in the attic (I’m 98 if you were wondering) but the fact is that I simply have lucky genes.  And I smile.  A smile is the best accessory because it makes you feel so much better as well as looking better or at the very least looking fatuous and providing some necessary comedy in the day for the smilee.

And my nominees … all of them terrific and each quite different from the others:

On the road cooking  – Pan makes delicious meals in the cab of her truck.  Which she shares with Stewie.  She’s a delight

Rose Bay Letters – nicknamed ‘the sidekick traveller’ by her son, Janet’s blog is such a pleasure.  Whether travelling or at home in New England, she treats us to beautiful pictures and insights.  We share a love of Oscar Wilde so the Dorian Grey is for her

Redo Sue – Sue writes, she says, because she has to.  I read her blog not because I have to but because what she writes is really very very good

Maison Travers – Nadia is a South African born cordon bleu cook who lived two decades in Los Angeles before settling in le Dordogne where she runs a Chambre d’Hotes and cookery school.  Delicious.

Sultana Bun – Lynda is a housewife and describes this as an admission of a dirty word.  There is nothing dirty about this delightful blog – just humour and pathos and life.  Its a joy.

So there you have it.  Feel free to  ignore me as the strange woman with the pokey nose who smiles inanely and continues to find the purpose in the way things are.

PS:  The title is Benjamin Disraeli – ‘I feel a very unusual sensation – if it’s not indigestion, it must be gratitude’.    I believe he said it to his arch enemy William Gladstone in some or other parliamentary debate.  In these days when politicians seem so hell bent on throwing rocks and never quite managing to move the obstruction in their throat that prevents them from being gracious to one another or, heaven forbid acknowledging that the other might have some credence, it would perhaps be an idea to cast minds backwards and concede that not all progress is good progress.  Manners maketh the man after all.  Even when the man (or woman) has designs on great office.

The photos in this post were all taken on a balmy hot day in the Belledonne mountains above Grenoble.  My father seemed so close as to be walking beside me that day over a decade since his death.  His love, his influence are woven so thoroughly into my own tapestry – I may not be able to see him but I never fail to feel him.

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Oct 5

46 Comments

Few desires, happy life

My husband and I, not because we want to, live apart for much of the time.  Our collective desire is to be together.  That would be our happy life.  When we are together we cook.  When we are apart, we often cook separately what we have cooked together.  It makes us feel closer in some way.  In Grenoble recently we went back to a favourite little Moroccan restaurant. There is a large North African and Arab community in the city and it is one of the things we love about the place.  This is not the grandest, nor the most expensive but it is family run and in the simple surroundings which appear not to have changed in decades you will get a fantastic meal served with grace and style by one of the children and not break the bank.  If I could remember it’s name I would share it ….

We had this dish as a starter not for the first time and back home in Cantal decided to try and replicate it.  Since then we have made it together and we have made it apart.  The restaurant has the edge, of course but I would urge you to give it a go because it is rather luscious.

 Zaalouk:

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Peel an aubergine (eggplant) and dice it, put into a pan with sufficient water to immerse (initially it’s light and spongy texture will cause it to float) and a teaspoon of salt.  Cover, bring to the boil and simmer until really soft.  Then drain in a collander and let all the water release.  Meanwhile, chop around 3 ripe tomatoes (if your tomatoes are dull and flavourless please use tinned – life is too short to willingly eat uninspiring tomatoes) and crush as much garlic as you dare – I use a fat clove for each tomato.  When the aubergine is well drained (feel free to give it a good squish to this end) sautee the garlic and tomatoes in a glug of olive oil with around a teaspoon of crushed cumin seed, twice that of crushed coriander seed and a half teaspoon of paprika (smoked or not depending on your own preference).  I add a pinch of sugar too – I find it makes tomatoes more tomatoey for some mysterious reason.  When the tomatoes are well cooked down stir in the aubergine pulp.  Let it cook for about 10 minutes and then fork it, mash it or even blend it (I blend with my trusty stick blender because I prefer the silken texture it gives).  Taste and add salt (mine is black and volcanic from Hawaii but that is not at all necessary – it honestly happens to be what I have in the house and is not any kind of arty condiment affectation) and more crushed coriander seed.  You can finish with chopped fresh coriander (cillantro) and it will be all the better for it but it is hard to find here in my coin perdu and I can’t seem to get it to grow successfully – a matter of huge frustration which borders on the obsessional.  Last of all drizzle with more olive oil.

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This can be eaten hot or cold – we favour just above warm with bread – here in bread heaven we have a ridiculous choice of course, in North Africa I imagine it would be eaten with pitta and, as an aside, I have dipped crunchy raw veggies in it too and it is good and feels rather virtuous.

As a point of interest – the aubergine was once called mala insane (the apple of madness) and it is a member of the nightshade family.  Though not deadly, it does contain toxins which will upset a sturdy tummy when turning from flower to fruit.  You have been warned.

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PS:  The title is a Moroccan proverb of which I am very fond

Jul 12

12 Comments

I’m forever blowing bubbles …

… Little bubbles in the air …. for me that is the anthem of West Ham (an East End of London football team for those unfamiliar with them … don’t ask me to explain the Ham nor the fact that they are from the East and called West – though I can if pushed).  I support The Arsenal, a North London team.

These bubbles  were installed in Grenoble, which you can glimpse in the background and which is commonly referred to as the gateway to the Alps, for the 1968 Winter Olympic Games.  They are correctly called The Grenoble-Bastille Telepherique (or cable car).  The sixties was a time of experimentation and free expression in every sphere and engineering was no exception.  The French love engineering and respect engineers.  Which can only be a good thing.  Amongst other revelations were three tower blocks to house the athletes which were to revolve on their bases.  They are still inhabited and still visible from all over the city but I’m quite relieved to say that they never actually revolved.  The bubbles were to be the symbol of the games.    All these years later (and a rebuild in 1975 of the stations at top and bottom too) and they are preserved and still running happily up and down to la Bastille, the mountain in the middle of the city, all day and into the night over the Isere river below.  They long ago surpassed the original ideal to become the symbol of the city.

The title of this weeks photo challenge is Symbol – you can find many more exemplaires of the notion, here

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PS:  The inaugural ‘voyage’ of the bubbles in 1967 was planned point perfect as such things are and the bubble cars were filled with dignitaries, including the mayor himself and various Olympic higher-muck-a-mucks …. unfortunately the cable busted and the bubbles were left suspended over the river for some time until a rescue could be effected. They were left for seemingly hours because the Franco-German consortium responsible for the design and installation (it should be noted that there had been a cable car of sorts in place since 1934) had a bigger project to attend to!   These days this would have spelt instant closure.  Some things have not improved in this modern world of ours

The picture was taken by HB²  (my husband to the unititiated) and though I have many good ones – we are regular visitors – I wanted his to be published since Grenoble was once his home and still remains so somewhere in his heart.

Jun 28

18 Comments

You set my soul alight

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a Muse in the wardrobe.  A little creature that is hard-wired to your inner creative that you can take off its hanger and plug in to waft around your space like a visionary air freshener,  inspiring as you respire making the process of conceiving and forming as easy as pie.  Failing that, I suppose we all have a mechanism that works in a sort of a way and for me the sort of a Muse is generally a mountain or some water.  Up at 7,000 feet plus in the pre-Alps of the Belledonne mountains above Grenoble you find lakes.  The ones in the picture are called les Lacs Roberts.  Align them to a perfect sky (note the sticky candy clouds in the otherwise perfect blue – imperfection is perfection I always feel)  and something in me soars and sparkles and I feel the inspiration bubble.  Whether it makes any sense to anyone else or whether it is just garbled rubbish is neither here nor there – the fact is that my soul is free and light.  It’s a start.

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PS:  The title is from a song called Supermassive Black Hole …. My husband is another sort of muse for me though I don’t keep him in a wardrobe on a hanger – he of the two brains who has been working to get the first images of M87 a common or garden supermassive black hole and looks to the stars for his muse (when he’ not looking to me of course!)  The song is by The Muse … it amused me.  Here is is:

Many more fine interpretations for the weekly photo challenge entitled Muse can be found here

Feb 23

6 Comments

Awards season Part 2 ….. Second Time Around

Yesterday I just snuck in before the Oscar ceremony with my acceptance of and nominations for a Very Inspiring Blogger Award.  Hot on the heels of that award last year, I was also nominated a second time for a Liebster Award.  Now I don’t consider myself a greedy girl but I do like to engage with these awards because I believe I can help others in so doing.  So I graciously accepted it and three months later here I go with my little ceremony.  Less glitz than Beverly Hills but nonetheless a huge tantarra, and a huge boost for a newcomer to the heady world of blogging.  At this point, I would like Julie Andrews to step onto the stage and sing the song I used to threaten my daughters with when they were dragging their heels on the walk to school.  ‘The Hills Are Alive’ sung slightly too high and certainly too loud more in the style of Gracie Fields than Maria had them trotting along begging for mercy EVERY time – but absent Ms A’s beauteous presence you will just have to make do with me and I promise, no song.

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Just the place to sing The Hills Are Alive – plateau de l’Artense in the Belledonne above Grenoble

The Liebster is an award for newcomers.  There is a  criteria for followers but to be frank I ignore it partly because of my innate maverick tendencies and partly because on many sites the blogger doesn’t display a counter for number of followers.  So I am going my own sweet way and nominating blogs that I like irrespective of their pulling power.  Gill who writes Blog sur Aude nominated me and I do urge you to take a look at her blog.  It follows the trials, tribulations, triumphs and frustrations of renovating a village house in Southern France.  Fortunately, though not a professional, she is passionate and clearly talented with interiors.  This, though,  does not render her immune from the inevitable difficulties attached to working in a different country, much of the time remotely.  I’m a sucker for pretty things and I enjoy reading about her journey probably more than she enjoys being at the effect of the deep desire to just get her place finished!  So thank you Gill – I am very touched that you thought me good enough.

Here are the rules of engagement:

  • Thank the person who nominated you and link their blog to your post
  • Answer 11 questions they have asked you
  • Nominate 11 bloggers who have 200 followers or fewer for the award
  • Ask 11 questions of those bloggers
  • Let your nominees know you nominated them
  • Add the Liebster Award logo to your blog

And here is the pretty award which this time I will add to my blog along with the other award … I shall have to ask for help from Two Brains though because it’s all a bit beyond me when they start talking about code and widgets!

 

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Gill asked me these questions and I have genuinely enjoyed thinking about my answers (for 3 months …)

1. What is the best thing about blogging, for you?

It’s slowly slowly ever so slowly increasing my self-confidence.  This in turn has made my husband happy … he is my biggest advocate and support and is quite determined that I am smart and talented.  I may not be either of those things but I do now understand that out there are some people who I please with my words.

2. Do you ever read your old posts and cringe? (no, that’s just me then..)

Not really – sorry but to be fair I very seldom re-read any of them

3. If money was no object, where would you live and why?

Right here.  In my coin perdu.  Because it is beautiful, because the people have just accepted the oversized English woman with the French of a Spanish Cow into their fold with no questions asked but mostly because for the first time since I left the house I grew up in, I am home and I can put down roots

4. What book can you read over and over again and still love it?

Apart from any one of my far too large collection of cookery books (my children cruelly took 9 boxes full to a charity shop 5 years ago leaving me with less than 100 but I am slowly replacing every one of my lost boys ….) there are so many – I love poetry and often read it out loud to anyone prepared to listen or just to myself … Yeats, Neruda – far too many to mention.  I love to read Shakespeare and then there are lists and lists and lists of books I have read and re-read.  The Master and Margarita stuns me every time.  Oh, and Winnie The Pooh …. which I still think is one of the greatest masterpieces of 20th Century literature.

5. What was the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you? and

Just do it … my boss and mentor when I was a wet-behind-the-ears trainee in the industry that brings us the Oscars, whenever I was looking for affirmation would simply say ‘Just do it’  A few years later, Nike stole his strapline …

6. Did you follow it?

Yes – and I fell on my face and I got bruises and lesions but I have never regretted a single time that I followed those words

7. What was your favourite lesson at school

I loved learning and of course I preferred the things that came easily – which was most things except Maths.  I was good at that too until they brought letters into the game … algebra and I were not friends and have continued to ignore one another quite happily ever since

8. Who is your best friend?

My husband – he of the Two Brains.  And The Bean.

9. What is the best gift you ever received?

Self confidence.  It’s a work in progress.

10. Coast or Country?

The country so long as I am close to water

11. Now or later?

Now – preferably sooner which may seem odd given that it has taken me 3 months to address this … but I can honestly say when things are not done they niggle me to the core

Now for the best bit … 11 nominations – passing the love to:

1.  The Worlds Biggest Fridge Magnet – Cameron is in his own words ‘a fatty’ and he is about to have surgery which will change his life.  Funny, touching, informative, sometimes uncomfortable but hugely readable personal take on what is one of the biggest epidemics in the western world – obesity

2.  Storing Hope – Wilson Agaba believes that love is the answer.  His blog is full of lovely stories that prove his point

3.  It’s a Wonderful World – Can’t argue with that!  Shikha has a fabulous blog about her travels and hopes for more travels illustrated with some really stunning pictures

4.  Santosh Namby is a civil servant in India and loves photography … I have linked to his Gravatar rather than pick one of his blogsites – there are three and I leave it to you to explore and enjoy the beautiful images and the wisdom with which he accompanies them

5.  Travels with Choppy – written by Sarah Ferguson and following her life and travels with the dog she brought home from a pound as a 12 week old puppy some 6 years ago

6.   Yelling Rosa – is a Finnish Poet, has more than one volume under his belt and is interesting as a writer of poetry and songs from a culture I know virtually nothing about, but want to.  That’s me in a nutshell really – I want to know all about everything.  Life’s too bluddy short!

7.  Le Drake Noir – takes stunning photographs and has a slightly lateral take on the world … spending part of the year on Merseyside and part in Alsace is immediately appealing to me given my family links to both.

8.  Another Cup of Coffee – Margaret came to the US from Cuba where a childhood in the 60s as a Catholic with a conscience was maybe less than straightforward.  She is a sensitive and beautiful photographer and has a lovely self-deprecating style when she writes

9.  Minding my Ps with Q – the Q is for Quirkiness and I suppose most would think it quirky for a grown human to believe that toys play when we are not looking and fairies live at the bottom of the garden … but I believe both those things and I could fly as a child, so I should know

10.  Anita is another where I am linking you to a Gravatar rather than a website … she has three and they are all rather gorgeous – one for her stunning photographs, another for her lovely beads and jewellery and my favourite of all the one devoted to all things yarn

11.  Dunelight when questioned as to why she had settled in Michigan said ‘it’s the light’ and she is all about light … beautiful often stunning photos and well chosen words to accompany.  Besides, she defended The Bean when photographed sitting so patiently outside the door in the snow recently so she has to be on my list!

Now, I appreciate that some will see this as a double edged sword, I understand that most of my list do not need my help in raising their profile but I was thought of and I can think of less offensive things to do than say I think someone is worthy of recognition outside of their normal circle of trust so here are the questions I would like answered by those that choose to do so:

 

1.  Where in the world would you like to go that you have not been so far?

2.  Dog, cat or something else entirely?

3.  Last supper – food and guests?

4. What would you do differently if you knew no-one would judge you?

5.  The one inanimate thing you would save from your burning home?

6. What do you think is your greatest strength?

7.  And conversely what would you say is your greatest weakness?

8.  What is the best compliment you have ever received?

9.  Which character in literature could be you?

10. In the film of your life, who would play you?

11. And what would the title of the film be?

Off you go if you will and I will not be offended if you won’t.  The fact is that all the blogs listed give me great pleasure and I hope mine gives a little too.  Now I’m off to try and pin these awards on the left lapel of my blog.

PS:  Rather fittingly the title is a Lady GaGa song … she who wore an entirely normal ensemble to belt out a medley of Sound of Music songs at last night’s Oscars to mark the 50th anniversary of the film that I must have seen at least that many times ….

Sep 4

47 Comments

Dance me to the end of love

As previously noted, we drive a lot, little dog and I a motley pair and better still a trio completed by the husband with two brains.  One day not so long ago we set off for Grenoble at around 5 a.m.  We go to Grenoble reasonably frequently since HB2 has associations with IRAM (Institut de Radioastronomie Milliemetrique) and indeed worked there for 9 years throughout the 1980s.  He had a house in the Belledonne mountains until recently and still has a bank account at Caisse D’Epargne in the village of Uriage les Bains.  That we had to go TO the bank to reset his PIN will tell you that this particular bank is a teeny bit perochial  – this is a 5-6 hour drive and we can’t use the nearer branches in Cantal because Caisse d’Epargne is entirely localised.  Hey ho.

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Chateau d’Uriage in Uriage les Bains

We made it in time for His Brainship to get whatever it was sorted and for The Bean and I to have a stagger up to the chateau (now in flats which I rather covert the idea of living in) and back down again.

Back to the University campus for lunch and a quick meeting with the glorious and waspishly effete Philippe (him) and a speedy spin around Castorama in search of another garden chair (The Bean and me).  In case you are concerned, they didn’t have the right chair in the right colour … silly me – its almost time for Christmas, why would a shop have garden furniture in Summer!

Choices, choices – 3 p.m on a sunny Tuesday what should we do next.  We could walk in the mountains … appealing.  We could go shopping … I can always talk myself out of that one.  Or we can go to Vienne.  The Brains have been before and I have wanted to go here ever since I drove through it the very first time I came down to Grenoble on my own and decided, with no time constraints to go entirely non peage.  That Leonard Cohen played in the Roman theatre in 2009 is a further lure.  I love him.  I wasn’t there but I wish I had been.  He used to be accused of writing music to slit your wrists by when I was at school and proud of the fact that my dad looked like him according to the very beautiful Sarah Chant.  I was not very beautiful so having a father who resembled an icon was a way of attaining that popular girl status we all craved if only to protect ourselves from the less lovely bullies who would make your life miserable at the drop of your school beret.  I still bathe in his exquisite lyrics and though he has never really been able to sing and I am told his voice such as it was is fading, I would still have loved to sit and listen and marvel at the agility of the true poet.

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L’ancien Theatre in Vienne

Of course Vienne won.  You know that.  And we arrived in the late afternoon of a particularly warm day, parked and strolled.  This place is lovely.  The second largest city in Isere (the largest is Grenoble) which in turn sits in Rhone Alpes.  The Rhone strolls leisurely through it.  Large and languid it needs make no extraneous effort to impress.  It just is.  The town was first settled by the Romans and wears those remains well.  Here the semi circular Ancien Theatre, there the Temple d’Auguste et de Livie, the ruins of the medieval castle on the hill that was built on Roman footings, the pyramid (otherwise known as le Plan de l’Aiguille) which rests on a four arched portico this is a place that knows what it is.

Cathedral de St Maurice
Le Temple de’Augustus et de Livia
Mediaval tower with extensions
L’Hotel de Ville
Spanning the river Rhone
L’Eglise St Pierre

It shimmys you through its history easily and the town moves around its monuments fluidly – al fresco bars and cafes abound and clearly it is thriving.  A huge new tourist office is being built looking over the river on which you can take a boat the size of a small principality to cruise and dine.  We made a note that we will.  It is a place we will return to and explore over and over again.  We whistle-stopped around it seeing the stunning cathedral of St Maurice, the elegant city hall and all the above except the needle.  I noted the casual layabout roman carved blocks by the Temple with some glee … one of the things I love about Rome is the way the ancient has just been squished in with the modern over the centuries and the bits that drop off just stay where they lay.  It has the beauty of an overstuffed boudoir whose owner can’t bear to part with a single thing, even if its broken.

I should note at this point that I have an overwhelming and admittedly, to the casual observer, quite possibly strange obsession with the departements and regions of France.  When we first drove the long drive from Oxfordshire to Cantal late last summer, we bought a book in one of the Aires on the way called ‘Les 101 departements de France’.  It is aimed at children …. probably quite young children if I’m honest but I love it.  Slowly, slowly I am making sense of the geography of this huge country and slowly, slowly I am learning all the departments, their numbers (they are numbered alphabetically) and I can idly note where the cars that punctuate my drives long and short come from.  And its not entirely pointless to know where they are from – for instance, there are lots and lots of Paris plates in Cantal and I know why …. if you want to learn you will have to stick with me because I am being discursive enough in this post already.  But I will, I promise, write about what I have learned the historic connection between the two is, before very long at all.  My pledge is that if you hold you breath, you won’t turn blue … I don’t want asphyxiated readers on my conscience so that will be spur enough to write it.  Back on piste …. I live in Auvergne (in Cantal – number 15 to be precise) and to the west of me is Limousin and number 87 is Haute Vienne.  Which means there must be a Vienne.  And indeed there is (number 86 naturally) – I’ve been there … it’s in Poitou-Charente and its capital is the lovely Poitiers which I will always think of as Sidney.  If you are as old as I you will know what I mean.  But Vienne is not in Vienne.  It’s in Isere.  And that it was historically called Vienna makes it even more confusing.  But one thing I was sure of  that Viennoisserie, the wonder of French patisserie must certainly come from Vienne.  I pressed my nose against several pastry shop windows … I am often to be found in this postion lured by the sweet wonderlands they always are.  And I went home secure in the knowledge that I had been in the home of the croissant.  Only to find that they come from Vienna.  But then again … maybe it was this Vienna.  Before it was Vienne.  Surely.  Surely the French can’t be eating Austrian pastries … can they?

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I’d buy it ….

On the long drive home I told my husband a story of a trip a little while ago … stay with me now, settle and I will share it with you.

In April we travelled to Russia.  For Russia you need a visa.  The two venerable institutions (that which he works for and that which he was visiting) communicated, many people filled in many forms for him and we travelled to Lyon to drop our passports, pay a fee and settle back for their return in a week or so.  Two Brains went back to the US a few days later (that our daughters are convinced that he is one of The Men in Black may go a way to explain how the passport was in Paris via Lyon and he still managed to board a flight from Europe and enter the US without a murmour) and I woke the following day to an ominous email telling me that something was wrong in the process and I needed to contact him urgently.  Actually, my paperwork (which I had filled out myself) was perfect but unfortunately the enormous combined brains of the two venerable institutions had made a mistake with his.  Frantic calls to Paris, more paperwork and eventually, after nearly two weeks,  a call to tell me that the passports were ready for collection in Lyon.  That I was due to travel to London on the Monday left me with no alternative but to drive down before the Consulate closed at midday on the Saturday.  Which I did.  And a lovely drive it was – sunrise over the volcanos of the Puy de Dome can never fail to captivate.  The Bean, unimpressed by the display  slept and we made Lyon by 11.  I ran in and out bearing the treasured passports complete with visas and skipped back to the car to take tiny dog for a walk and grab a coffee before the journey home.  The consulate is in a pretty area of what is a lovely city and one that I fully intend to explore but enough of buildings and rivers and city ambience, the point of this story is a person.

Pretty it is, but mostly closed on a Saturday morning, in this area that is mainly devoted to businesses.  Vainly looking about for a likely pit-stop I nearly fell over a tiny little lady pulling a shopping trolley prettily adorned with macaroons.  She was trying to catch the attention of The Bean so I stopped in politeness and truthfully complimented her cake-garnished pull-along.  In my opinion there can never be too many macaroons in a life, preferably to devour but if that isn’t an option then images adorning pretty much anything are an acceptable reminder of their delight.  The lady was truly like a sparrow – tiny, black eyed and spry.  She coaxed and cajoled The Bean who dutifully danced on her hind legs and the lady rewarded me with the tinkling laughter of so many fairies ringing tiny bells in the tree lined square.  She told me she had a dog indoors who is so old that he can only make it to the bottom of the steps twice a day to perform his necessary functions and that aged and slow as she is the dog can’t keep up at all.  She asked if I was from Lyon and I told her no, English but living in Cantal.  She was interested.  Did my husband work there … no – America.  She hoovered up every morcel of information I could give her and pointed in turn to the only cafe open on a Saturday morning in this district.  She wanted to know if I had children.  I told her about the girls and about the son I gained with marriage.  She laughed at my eye-rolling descriptions of them and asked if they visit often.  I told her they would in summer I hoped.  We chatted away and she asked if I had grandchildren.  Not yet I said.  And then all of a sudden her face creased in the wrong way.  The sad way.  Her dark beaded eyes clouded and tears pricked them.  I touched her arm and asked stoutly (I am English in a crisis) if I could help.  She composed herself and told me that she had lost a grand-daughter.   To start with I thought this must have just happened but in fact it was over 20 years ago. Aged barely 19, killed in a road accident.  A fool drove his car into hers.  He survived, she died.  She said not a day passes that she doesn’t think of the girl, a promising ballerina so full of life then brutally stamped out.  The girl was her youngest grand-daughter.  She said the dancing stopped with her passing.  I couldn’t leave her in her sadness so I suggested we take coffee together.  We walked the square and sat in front of the cafe for maybe a half hour.  I would estimate that this little bird was at least 85 and probably ten or even more years older than that.  Her clothes, immaculate, her tiny frame that would fit in her own shopping trolley, her lovely lilty slightly growly voice, her directness affected me then and I will always think of her.  Not as often as she thinks of her dancing grand-daughter but nonetheless I will think of her often.  The grief still so raw after decades and the root of it the fact that she still walks and her grand-child is motionless.  Dance me to the end of love ….

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Plateau d’Artense in the Belledonne above Grenoble …. to me this is where my father walked when his spirit left his body. I can see the lively young spirit of a dancer on the path with him

PS:  Familiarity breeds contempt – unfortunately 2 weeks later I got a rather official letter rather officially telling me that somewhere between Brioude and le Puy en Velay I had been doing a whopping 97 in a 90 zone – 1 penalty point, 45 euros and a note to self that nearly a year here has made me rather too blasé.  To note:  Here there is no 10% cushion … in fact at 90 kmh the allowable excess is 2 kmh – that’s less than 1 mile per hour at nearly 60.

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