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Posts tagged ‘Weekly Photo Challenge’

Mar 7

92 Comments

Whether they had one or not, upon thars

These cows are blended cows.  Not cows that have been put in a blender – that would be grisly and hopefully illegal.  These are half and halfs and the palest are known as jaunes (yellows).  The ancient cow of Cantal is the Salers.  They were originally black and you still find blacks amongst them.  They are celebrated and fêted and look as though they have migrated from Spain to avoid being Matador fodder.  The more familiar Salers these days is a ruddy red – deep auburn and hardy.  And pronged with splendid Harley Davidson handlebar horns.  They are emblematic of their place.  Their rich creamy milk goes to make the many cheeses for which the region is renowned – most commonly Salers itself, the ubiquitous Cantal, St Nectaire and  Bleu d’Auvergne.  Their meat is prized in the region and in Paris too – in fact if you visit the Cinquieme Arrondissment you will find that in addition to being the Latin quarter it is also a veritable hive of restaurants specialising in produce from Cantal including wonderful dishes based on Salers beef and veal.  These cows are bovine A-listers in our locale.  But some farmers,  breed them with the great white  Charolais, themselves beef royalty the world over.  This breeding produces the yellows.  They too are prized – their meat is sublime and the price is good.  It is called progress by some, meanwhile the purists  frown.   I stand neutral.  I’m not a farmer, not a native of Cantal and have no right whatsoever to judge.  I just  love cows.  I find them to be rather harmonious creatures.  So they seem appropriate sitting in their stunning landscape under a rudely blue sky on December 28th last year as my illustration of Harmony the word named as prompt this week for the Weekly Photo Challenge.   I think you will agree that the panarama too is pretty easy on the eye – the grassy Plateau de Limon looking  across to the Cèzallier mountains beyond and in between the snail like crater of one of the numerous volcanoes that gave the region it’s personality all those aeons ago.

But wait!  There is one thing  – if you look at the foreground you will see diggings.  Not the minings of moles but mole rat shovellings  … these pesky rodents have multiplied alarmingly in Cantal in the very recent past and they have become a tremendous nuisance.  The question is can we live harmoniously with these critters or should steps be taken to eradicate them?  I’ll leave you to ponder the damage they do to this wholly agricultural territory versus their right to peaceful occupation.

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PS:  The title is from The Sneetches by Dr Seuss, a story of creatures identical in every way to one another except for the stars on the bellies of the entitled ones … the moral is elementary – after all what hope have we of saving the planet if we can’t co-exist with our own without dwelling on what they have or have not upon thars!

Feb 12

61 Comments

Won’t you join the dance?

Out walking on Saturday after a fresh tumble of damp sticky snow, we came across this ravishing creature.  It has the look  of a crustacean feeling its way across the sand and brought to mind instantly the creations of Dutch artist Theo Jansen  who creates fantastical kinetic sculptures which echo the most outlandish elements of beast, bird and bug.   Life imitating art as the photo challenge requests this week …

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PS:  As for me, I was in Wonderland with  Alice, listening intently and trying not to put a foot in the soup as the Mock Turtle tells the story of the beauteous Lobster Quadrille.  But try as I did, I couldn’t find a partner for this shrimp – perhaps I should join the dance – after all, it is what gave me the title.

 

Feb 9

82 Comments

The soft look your eyes once had

I was fortunate to have two Grannies when I was small.  In fact I had two until I was nearly 16 but unhappily one succumbed to dementia and was in a nursing home for nearly 8 years before her life extinguished.  So, at the time, half of mine was spent with her vibrant, outspoken and faintly outrageous personality, full of bell-like tinkling laughter chiming through her house replete  with rather exotic and eminently touchable artifacts and half with a shrinking, fading somewhat pathetic reminder of whom she had been.  I remember being vaguely scared of her when we went to visit as she evaporated slowly away.  She was withered and bent and painfully thin with skin parched and almost transparent through which the vessels carrying her aged blood were defiantly visible.  Dessiccating.  She had the faint odour of care home and often didn’t utter a sound except the thinnest of hints of breath in and out.  When she did speak she had a habit of rambling in guttural spitty Arabic having lived in Egypt in the 1920s and 30s during the up-market tourist boom of that era when my grandpapa was chief accountant for Thomas Cook.  Sadly it was a relief to be sent outside to play with the nursing home dog – an unfeasibly large pyreneen mountain dog called Uggles who resembled Nana in Peter Pan and was similarly hard-wired to nurse-maiding children.  When she died at the age of almost 92 there were few left to mourn her so her funeral was tiny – eight of us including my cousins, my elder brother and I.  So feeble were our collective voices that the crematorium put a cassette tape of the Kings College Choir singing our chosen hymns to bolster us up.  Outside it was cold and damp and I realised my father was crying.  I realised my father was a son.  I realised my father was a feeling, emotional creature just like me.  It was a seminal moment.

As I’ve grown older I miss her even though I barely had opportunity to acquaint with her and I wish I’d had the moment to know her better.  I’m told I’m like her.  I take it as the greatest  compliment – she lost an arm in the First World War when nursing in France.  Gangrene.  Not carelessness, just caring for others in greater need.  When we were small children she used to swing one armed into a string hammock and then pull us all in with her, one at a time and read us stories under the lilac trees.  She also had a wonderful and positively enormous cat called Kim who resembled an overstuffed fur cushion.  She was, therefore Granny Kim.

This lady sitting in les Jardins de Luxembourg hijacks me, reverses time and  delivers me to a presentday now past and long forgotten yet seamlessly evoked.  A time I wish I had noticed when the then was now.  She knows nothing of her curious power of course as she casually soaks in the sunshine.  Behind her the children play, the lovers drift hand in hand, friends gossip on benches.  Every one of us growing older as time relentlessly moves us forward.  Carpe diem.

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I post the picture in response to The Daily Press Weekly Photo Challenge entitled ‘Time’ – you can see all the other, far worthier interpretations here

PS:  The title is from one of  the most touching and bittersweet poems I know ….

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

WB Yeats

Feb 3

68 Comments

Joie de vivre

Here is The Bean in a bag.  A Bean bag if you will.  She looks so full of life, so vibrant.  Which she is.  A positive ball of energy madly running around nose to the ground sucking up whatever scents are assaulting her snout with a joie de vivre that leaves us breathless much of the time.  This particular day was excessively hot so we popped her in a handbag to save her overheated, fatigued legs.  We are careful of this Bean.

Last September we made the trip from home in the Cantal to Paris (about five and a half hours by car).  I had an appointment with the US Embassy and in deference to my tense disposition at the thought of the impending Green Card interview, my husband booked us into our favourite Hotel des Dames du Pantheon.  We have stayed before and The Bean is treated like royalty and always referred to by name by the excellent and delightful fully multi-lingual staff.  As ever we were given a room with a ‘vue impenetrable’ of the Pantheon in all it’s beauteous glory.  I had an appointment with an Embassy endorsed physician (there are two of them in Paris) for my medical.  I was nervous.  I’m not very good at medical for me.  During my morning away being examined by this charming Irishman, having chest X-rays and blood tests and vaccinations for things I have never heard of and am sure I certainly don’t want to be acquainted with, The Bean reclined regally in our room.  She had taken the air of the Cinquieme Arrondissement before breakfast, enjoyed a little smackerel of brekkie stashed in a napkin and smuggled back to the room for her delectation and was entirely happy to be fully relaxed and generally recumbant.  In the afternoon we walked.  She doesn’t get to run much off the lead in Paris but people are largely very dog-friendly and she is always happy to take a petit café an apero or better still, a meal with us because folk have a habit of slipping her a pat and a morcel of something nice.

The following day we made our way by car (which had hitherto been parked in the underground carpark nearest the hotel) to the Place de la Concorde.  We were a little late out of the starting gate and had to be at the Embassy promptly at One to get through security.  These were our emphatic and clear instructions and we did not want to put a foot wrong.  We had about 49 minutes to park the car,sneak a quick lunch, return to the car to deposit dog and get in line for the main event.  Lunch would need to be somewhere around Fauberg St Honoré which runs along the back of the Embassy and about 5 minutes walk from the car.  We hot-footed it, taking lengthy and rapid strides towards our goal of a likely lunchery.  The street is fairly narrow and we were stuck behind a posse of rather bulky people walking excessively slowly.  So I put my  foot on the imaginary throttle and powered past, The Bean (the Athletic Bean as she perceives herself) gambolled along behind me.  It must be noted that I was at this point in my life uptight to boil-over point.  We had been waiting for two years for this moment, jumping through a seemingly endless series of hoops and I had absolutely no idea what questions I was going to be asked.  It is rather akin to being asked to interview for a job but with no job description to guide the prep.  As I passed the entourage a woman’s voice rang and twang in my ears ‘oh that poor little thing being dragged and choked near to death’.  I snapped.  The world slowed down as I span round like Wonderwoman and eyes flashing squared up to the offender.  ‘She is neither dragged nor choked so I suggest you SHUT UP!’ I spat – my clipped, polished and perfectly enunciated English worthy of Maggie Smith at her most pithy.   The woman was clearly appalled at this deranged firebrand addressing her.  I imagine she had assumed I was French.  Assume as my youngest daughter reminds us makes an ASS out of U and Me.  For my own part I have only just recovered my equilibrium, so livid was I at the unjustness of the flung accusation.  It was only as I glided on my way, sure in the knowledge that I had put that wench squarely in her place, that it occurred to me. She being American and in the street that runs down one side of the Embassy building that she might, might easily be the same person who would interview me for the fabled Green Card that very afternoon …. mercifully this was not to be an occasion to add to my overstuffed portfolio of ‘oh bugger’ moments.  If she is on the Embassy staff she at least wasn’t confronted by me twice that day.  But not for the first time, I wished I was that person who has the ability to just waft by situations.  Lunch did not slip down easily as the lump in my throat expanded.  The Bean, yet again was the winner …. she rather likes saumon fumé au fromage frais de chêvre though I believe she was less than enamoured of the salade.

Bean Bag!

Bean Bag!

PS:  I post this in response to the Daily Press Weekly Photo Challenge entitled Vibrant.  For me vibrancy is about a state of being not simply about vivid colour (though that is a reasonable interpretation of the word and many have quite brilliantly here) and The Cruelly Treated Bean is vibrancy incarnate.

Jan 8

32 Comments

Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock

France is speckled with more than her fair share of rugged fortresses and fairy-tale chateaux and every shade and hue betwixt, between, beyond and behind.  This one (le Chateau d’Arouze) stands dominant over le Vallée D’Alagnon in the commune of Molompize which has it’s own unique micro-climate enabling it to pioneer the revival of Cantalien wine-making.  We walked the terraces and we conquered the Castle. I have a tendency to hoover up the ambience and atmosphere of  buildings to the extent that my life imagined appears to play out within and without them and I find myself a player in my own drama without ever needing to put pen to paper.  This one did not disenchant as I swished and swooshed and scrambled and scaramouched my way around it, the fantasy trumpeting loud in my head all the while.

HB² (that’s my husband with two brains for new readers) took this sublime shot which seems to me to indicate weightlessness on several levels – the bristly half grown beards of grass like immature goaties on the tops of those ancient towers seem drawn upwards as though absolved of gravity, the stone skillfully, artfully placed so long ago (in 1309 for pedants such as me) reaches heavenwards vainly trying to touch the clouds, themselves apparently weightless wafting serenely and, I always think, a little scathing of that which they float effortlessly above.

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I’m responding to the prompt ‘weightless’ in this weeks Daily Press Photo Challenge …. all the other, more marvellous entries are here.

PS:  Sylvia Plath, that most fragile of souls, who I love thoroughly and unashamedly wrote the poem that I snatched my title from.  That she was born in the same year as my still living mother but died only three years after my birth has always resonated  poignantly with me.  Now it suddenly strikes me that she was born so close to where I am making my home for a while in Massachusetts and the echoes ring more shrilly still.

Through portico of my elegant house you stalk
With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit
And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.

Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch, quitting castle when real days break.


Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;
While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit
Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,
Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:
Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,
What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?
Conversation Among The Ruins
Sylvia Plath

 

 

Jan 6

98 Comments

Miles to go before I sleep

‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep’ … if you know who wrote the lines you have a clue to where I am and indeed the place that is now home for some time to come.  Fancy a guess? Leave a comment below and those of you who already know keep your council a while longer if you please.

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The picture is in response to the Daily Press challenge to greet this nearly new year and titled ‘Circle’ – here are the other several hundreds of wonderful entries.

This place where I landed a week and a day ago has the most unimaginably beautiful light.  Gentle, pale, soft, benign and the reflection in the frozen pond of delicate sky charmed us as greatly as the ripples made static circles by the freezing puff of winters breath

Here, to make my test entirely untesting is the poem that gave me the line that seemed so apt to title this new chapter in my life:

 

 

 

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
The little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’

Robert Frost

Dec 9

45 Comments

I’m strong to the finish cos I eats me spinach

Actually this bad boy is more usually made with  Blette which is chard if you aren’t speaking French but if you can’t get that you can use Epinard which is Popeye’s best friend.  In my experience it works well with both.

It’s called Pounti and is one of the absolute signature dishes of l’Auvergne region and in particular le Cantal.  I give a recipe below.  This is not a food blog so it is just my own favourite method and not cleverly photographed. For me, food is for sharing with those I care about so the food posts on my blog are just that – food for you to sample if you care to share.  I was entirely put off by the description offered by a French friend who is a vegetarian which might explain her reluctance, when I first stumbled on it. However, I braved it in Salers a day or two before The Man with Two Brains morphed into The Husband with Two Brains and became rather wed to it before I was wed to him.  Salers is one of ‘les plus beaux villages de France’ and as such is very much on the tourist map.  It’s population is tiny (less than 350 permanent residents) but it positively teems in summer and the shops and eateries and drinkeries thrive.  From Toussaint to Paques (November 1st to Easter) it is pretty well closed except for the boulangerie, boucherie and a couple of braveheart businesses.  Medieval and with buildings, including the church, hewn from volcanic basalt it is certainly worth a visit but it is a fine example of a place that absolutely lights up in the sunshine and seems to don a rather gloomy shroud in less than clement weather.

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This is not lightweight, fashionably clean-eating food.  This is hale and hearty prop-up-the-workers in the harsh elements food.  It’s a loaf and is generally served warm or cold.  If you have it in a  restaurant, it will be artfully cut or made as pert little individual cakes and served with a zingy salad often as a starter but also as a main at lunch.  It is hefty enough not to require any starch on the side.  At home, we served our first attempt two years ago cut into little squares as an appetiser with the appero at a lunch party.  Our friends eyed it will a little apprehension but didn’t spit it out and as far as I could see didn’t hide it in their hankies nor handbags either.  And we loved it and gave each other surrepticious self-contratulatory looks from across the room.  As one does.  The rest of that particular loaf (it was large and I have since invested in a smaller tin and halved the quantities for fear of onset Pounti-fatigue on day three) we sliced and took on a long and lovely hike the following day.  Treating it as the Cantal equivalent of a super-succulent meatloaf, I suppose though my English reference point would have to be Pork Pie.

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Here are The Brains and The Bean replete after their pounti picnic

Now before I begin, I must warn you that the ingredients list looks odd.  But hand on heart, it is really delicious.  Think of it as that marriage that you secretly sneered to self would never EVER work and yet as the 2 in 3 fall like  skittles by the wayside and prove the statisticians right, it glides effortlessly along with only the merest of bumps in it’s road and melds into the collective consciousness as a mysterious but undoubted triumph.

Ingredients:

  • 300g Chard (leaves only – use the stalks in a gratin or sautee) or spinach but in either case chopped fine
  • 1 large or 2 smaller onions chopped equally fine
  • A big bunch of parsley – about the size of a fat head of brocolli. This is much easier to find in France than elsewhere so feel free to play with other gentle flavoured herbs and use dried if you need to. Chop what you have fresh, you guessed it, fine
  • 300g Sausagemeat
  • 6 eggs given a light beating
  • 300g flour. Traditionally it would be buckwheat but white flour is generally better behaved
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder unless, of course your flour is self-raising though the comedy value of using both might be worth it for any idle onlookers
  • ½ litre milk – mine is semi-skimmed (2%) but feel free to use your favourite – it won’t make any difference to the result.  In fact some recipes call for a couple of dollops of creme-fraiche in addition to milk but I stop short of that addition
  • 300g stoned prunes (stones removed not drugged for the avoidance of doubt)
  • Salt and freshly ground pepper

Method:

  • Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6
  • Grease and flour a 2lb loaf tin or terrine. And line it too if you think your container needs it – I’m all for safety first
  • If your prunes are the ready stoned, no soak variety you can now look self-righteous but if not, you need to stone them. My wandering mind now has visions of lining them up and hurling rocks at them. and set them to soak in warm water (or Armagnac if you feel extravagant)
  • Once you have finished all that chopping, its a question of mixing all the greens and onions in with the sausagemeat. Squidging with your hands is really the best way and oddly satisfying though I’m not certain I should be admitting to that.
  • Mix in the beaten egg and milk – alternating so it doesn’t get too slimey – this is another opportunity for some cheap comedy as getting it wrong can have the whole amorphous lump  skating like Bambi on ice out of the bowl on a skid of raw egg
  • Seive in the flour (and baking powder if using)
  • Season with salt and pepper and add dried herbs if needed to replace or bolster the fresh parsley
  • Turn half the mixture into the tin and cover with the pitted soaked prunes
  • Cover with the rest of the mix and place in the centre of the pre-heated oven.
  • Keep an eye on it – you may need to turn the oven back to 180C/350F/Gas 4 if it seems to be getting too brown too quickly
  • Bake for a 45 minutes and then test with a skewer.  If it comes out clean it’s done.  It will probably need an hour in all

 

If you halve the quantities, you will need a 1lb tin.  I know that sounds obvious and possibly even a trifle condescending but sometimes my meager brain needs a little nudging and though I am sure you are not so afflicted, I would not want to be responsible for any disaster.  The baking time will drop by a third.  If you choose to make individual loaves or little muffins, the baking time will drop to half.

PS:   I remember being desperately disappointed a few years ago when I read that the original Iron Rating made for Spinach by German scientist Emil Von Wolf in 1870  was mistaken.  His decimal point was misplaced leading to a caluculation ten times higher than it should have been.  The mistake was not discovered until the 1930s.  So although it is high in those essential folates, it is not actually any higher than any other green  vegetable.  Poor old Popeye – I wonder if it was the placebo effect.

Dec 4

24 Comments

I will sit on this style and continue to smile

I live in an area where the standard quip is that we have three cows to every human.  Most recognisable and the symbol of the Cantal are the Salers with their Harley Davidson horns and rich reddish brown coats.  In fact the original Salers were black and you do occasionally see a raven coated throwback still.  They are prized and revered and considered to be lucky.  And indeed they are fortunate since you won’t find them going to slaughter in a hurry.

But this beauty is actually a Ferrondaise.  There used to be far more of them but for reasons that they have so far failed to divulge to me (remember I speak like a Spanish cow not a French one) they dwindled.  Now the great and good of the Auvergne are encouraging farmers to restock them.  In our village we have an enchanting  farmer who sings lilting songs to his Ferrondaise as he walks them between fields.   The fact that he is missing several teeth does not make him self-conscious and he is happy to stop and pass the lisping time of day and share pearls of wisdom as his cattle casually amble up the main highway through the village. For my part, I don’t sing well though it doesn’t stop me from chirping, warbling and in particularly uninhibited moments positively yodelling which perhaps accounts for the look of disgust in this disgruntled beauty’s rolling eyes as we stopped to snap her.  I offer her to you in response to the Daily Press prompt Eye Spy.  Here are all the other fine offerings laid out for you to enjoy

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PS: The title is Edward Lear.  My mother-in-law lived in his house in Seymour St. London W1 for several years and he became ever more a part of the family tapestry as a result.  His whimsy nonsense, delight in bending and stretching words to his pleasure and seemingly simple illustrations never fail to cheer me.  This one goes thus:

There was an Old Man who said, ‘How
Shall I flee from that horrible cow?
I will sit on this stile,
And continue to smile,
Which may soften the heart of that cow.’

I did not sit on a style, nor did I try to soften her heart – I think she was a lost cause that afternoon though I don’t for a moment think she is horrible.  But then I am not an Old Man ….

Nov 14

46 Comments

When you don’t have the strength

I selected this image last night – I had just the story to go with it.  But what a difference a  moment makes.  I wandered past my drawing room where my TV was still on, left talking to itself when my youngest daughter rang for a chat some 2 hours earlier.  But here was no frou-frou Friday entertainment, here was our Giant Panda lookalike of a President looking shaken and grave.  Paris riven assunder AGAIN by terrorists.  Reports of death and maiming and pointless, unspeakable, unthinkable violence.  Our borders closed, we are on lock-down and in a state of emergency for the first time since 2005.  This morning, the community I live in is numb, shocked, shattered by proxy to the core.  We have shaken hands and dolled out les bises with tears in our eyes and rolling down our cheeks.  The last post I made on here was about bells.  Our bells have tolled their mournful E flat for a full ten minutes every hour this morning.  Peeling for the dead.  Peeling for the bereaved.  Peeling for the battered, mutlilated injured.  Respect.  Respect.

So I give you this image of Napoléon on his Marengo – a strange fabricated effergy that I photographed in Paris in September.  Just off Rue Saint Honoré close to the Place de la Concorde I have no idea what he is doing up there waving his banners like that.  But somehow I feel that he IS appropriate today.  When the very fabric of the country is waivering, reeling, tested to it’s extreme.  Maybe a molded dictator riding bare-back and tied down by guy-ropes is an accessible image of victory we can embrace.  Victory not of one party over another, nor one country over it’s adversery.  But the victory I dream of that love will prevail.  Because I do believe that in the end love is all we need.  And we must not let the bile of retribution get in it’s way.DSCF3479PS:  I was posting this in response to the Daily Press Weekly Photo Challenge entitled Victory – the other more remarkable entries can be found here.

PPS:  The actual Napoléon is responsible for my title – my favourite of his attributed quotes ‘Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength’.  Today of all days, those words resonate.

#jesuischarlie #jesuisparis #parisattacks #prayersforparis #jesuishumanité

Oct 16

55 Comments

Every time a bell rings an Angel gets his wings

In villages all over the world bells mark time.  They mark the hours, often the half hours and even the quarter hours through the day and sometimes throughout the night.  They call to prayer, they toll for the dead, they ring out joyously the news that two people are wed.  They sound their eccastic pleasure on Christmas morning and in France they are silent from Good Friday til they sound sonorously, building slowly, softly, increasingly exuberantly on Easter Sunday. After they have flown to Rome to be blessed and have dropped their goodies for the worthy on their flight home, of course.   Here in my village we have eight-til-late bells tolling out the hours and giving a single bong for the half hour.  I rather think I know their secret – shhh, don’t tell but … they are mechanised.  However a human person, possibly the Priest himself rings the bells for Mass.  He’s a dashing figure who wears his Catholic robes with a panache that the kings of couture would applaud on the catwalk.  He is also quite clearly tone deaf and devoid of any rhythmn.  A far cry from the rehearsed peels of my village church in England.  That was melodious this is frankly cacophonous.

Church bells to me are the soundtrack of ordinary life.  They mark out that rhythm that man has lived to for centuries.  It matters not whether you are part of the Church. It matters not, indeed whether you have any religious faith.  The bells provide the backdrop to life itself.

My birthday is at the end of September.  My youngest daughter came to stay for a week and wanted to take me for lunch.  Her treat.  This is a HUGE deal when the daughter in question is a student.  We drove to Brioude.  Its a town I have wanted to explore for a long while, just over the border in the Haute Loire (also part of the Auvergne Region).  We had very delicious lunch and then walked in the rather insistent mizzle that marked my birthday out from the WHOLE of the rest of the sunshiney month.  We heard the bells of the Basillica and we knew instantly from their sober tone that they were marking a funeral.  No-one needed to tell us to be quiet as we passed the building, the bells did it for us.  And somehow, those bells wrapped us for a moment in the huddled sadness of the group waiting to greet their loss for the last time.  Brought us to a halt, illicited respect.  Yes, bells are the soundtrack to ordinary life and that soundtrack is played in simple notes that mortals simply recognise and divine.

These bells are in Sainte-Anastasie in the Cezallier Cantallien.  They sit in a fine clocher-peigne which for non French speakers translates as a ‘bell comb’.  It describes perfectly the open structure that prettily suspends the bells rather using than a tower to house them.

DSCF4013PS:  Zuzu, George Bailey’s ‘little ginger snap’ is quoted in the title … at the end of the magic that is Frank Capra’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ squeezed tight by her daddy whose Guardian Angel (second class), Clarence has literally been his salvation she tells him this fact.   Her teacher told her so ….

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This piece was originally written two years ago, in response to The Daily Press weekly photo challenge (Extra)Ordinary – all other entries are here

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