It is the role of art to make you think. It’s not always a cotton wool existence. Sometimes you have to cringe, retreat inside your outer protective layers. Grimace whilst staring illogically at what you see in front of you. Such is this crack. He knows who he is but may never acknowledge it in public.
February 13, 2015
February 8, 2015
She packs em in
She packs em in the old Mona Lisa. Never seen such crowds stood in front of a picture before. Got to the front after a while and took a few shots. Mainly because everyone else was doing the same thing. Got me phone out and snapped a few. Was trying to imagine if she would go in our front room. Figured she would stand out a bit amongst the montage of kids pics, the old map of the Isle of man and panoramic view of the Liverpool docks frontage. Abandoned the idea. Not for sale anyway and with all that lot hanging around probably wouldn’t have got her for a decent price.
It’s a funny old thing innit. Art. You gotta hand it to em, artists. Couldn’t paint to save me life meself, unless it was painting by numbers. Coming back to old Mona there I’ve decided that no she would definitely not go in our front room. It’s not that the other stuff on the walls would clash. We could shift that to another room if push came to a shove. It’s that I don’t think we could cope with the number of visitors knocking on the door wanting to come in for a gander. Would cost us a fortune in tea bags. I suppose we could charge for the tea. It’s not how it’s done though is it? Charging visitors for a cup of tea when you’ve let em in to your house, uninvited or otherwise.
Nah nah nah. I do think that the Liverpool panorama could definitely move anyway and we could put something else there. That panorama is too long and narrow. Needs something bigger in that space. A Banksy maybe, although if we stuck a Banksy there the map of the Isle of Man would definitely have to move. It’s hundreds of years old. Banksy’s new stuff.
We could get Banksy to come and do the whole wall. Problem with that is that the missus likes to repaint the front room every few years. That Banksy would be a problem then wouldn’t it. She’d have to leave that wall and make sure that the rest of the room had a colour scheme that matched the Banksy. Hrmm. Maybe that counts Banksy out. I won’t write him off yet but I’m not rushing into a decision. Nah.
Have to stick with Liverpool for the mo. She likes that one. She’s from Liverpool and her dad gave it to her. Bought it from a shop in the Albert Dock. I know the one. It’s got the same picture as ours in the window. Must have had two of em.
A good start to a day
It’s another Sunday morning here in the Shire, and a fine one at that. Today Anne is playing host to our friend Natalia’s baby shower. A dozen or so worthy females will be descending on our house this lunchtime to celebrate the forthcoming happy day. It won’t be a place for male presence. The conversation will be highly biassed towards all in one baby suits and birth experiences. Urghh. Preparations have been underway for a few days now. My own contribution, that of lighting the fire in the front room, is already well in hand. In fact I am currently supervising the lit fire to make sure that it stays appropriately lit.
There is a feeling of wellbeing around the house. John is quietly using his hour’s ration on an online game. Terrorising and killing things no doubt, or playing a football match. Seems to be the pattern. Joe has not yet been spotted this morning. He had a late one on Friday night after the rubgy in the Morning Star and spent most of yesterday at music rehearsal of one kind or another before last night’s “Curious Blue” jazz gig in North Hykeham. I didn’t go but now wish I had as Anne came back with excellent reports. Hannah is in her hotel in Paris, hopefully and Tom is in the neo metropolis of Milton Keynes where he is visiting to watch MK Dons play Bristol City or some such worthy set of opponents.
Sat by the fire as I am I can contemplate the day ahead and a set of jobs that spring to mind. I’m not sure any of the said jobs will be done. I’m just noting the fact that they need doing. One is the trimming of the front hedge. The back hedge almost certainly needs doing too but I’d need to crane my neck to see that one. There is also a lot of wood that need putting to the chainsaw. That may get done as the least arduous task on the list. The wood is mainly small branches and some ex-playhouse stairs. Easy enough to dispose of and quite handy as kindling.
None of this is written down, yet. Great consideration must be given to an item before it can be included on the list because once written down it is is officially on the radar with the consequential expectation that it will at some stage be done. The hedges do need doing though. I might get someone in.
As I write the activity levels are growing. The sound of singing and whistling permeates from the kitchen together with the sound of dishes being put in the dishwasher. It’s all happy stuff. The fire is sufficiently lit for it to be left unsupervised. It’s a good start to the day.
February 7, 2015
68 Euro fine
Slightly risky this, getting the camera out in the gents loo. Had to be done though. This sticker needed capturing for posterity. What caught my eye was not the fact that smoking is forbidden in the toilet. That makes sense to me. It was the fact that the fine for being caught at it was 68 Euros. How on earth did they come up with that figure? Maybe it used to be 50 Francs or something.
The bell in the window of the top floor at Le Procope
This is a famous bell. Le Procope is the oldest cafe in Paris. It was frequented by philosophers such as Voltaire and contained a printing press. On the top floor there was a bell in the window. When something had been printed and was ready for distribution they would ring the bell and drop the printed matter to the ground where someone would catch it and take it away.
The girl in the window
Go on. Click on the picture. It’s a window. There is a girl in the window. She is looking at the scene outside. Who is she? What is she thinking?
February 5, 2015
The return journey with greenjumperman
There’s something about international train stations. Perhaps it’s because by and large we don’t have them in the UK, the Eurostar out of St Pancras being the exception. Seeing the names of what are to me exotic destinations up on the departures board is exciting. It also somehow feels appropriate that I am bleary eyed from a poor night’s sleep thanks to the usual waking up every half an hour to see if it is time for the alarm to go off yet. Or whether the alarm has not gone off when it should have more like. This morning I packed my stuff up in my room, fumbled my way around the living room to hug Hannah on the bed settee and set off. Rue Faubourg St Denis at 8am was just waking up. Shutters were being rolled up on shop fronts. Early commuters were starting to permeate through from Gare Du Nord and Gare De L’Est. Kids were being towed by parents, schoolward bound. I over heard one father say something to two kids decked out in identical coats. It ended in “uh?”. The verbal shrug of Gallic shoulders being instilled at a young age. Hannah has a lie in. She is meeting someone to hand over the keys to the AirBnB apartment at midday. Our instructions in the welcome pack were to leave the key on the table in the living room. However whoever comes in to clean up has lost their key and so needs ours to get a new one cut. That piled the pressure on us. Every time left the flat I had to treble check that I had the key with me. Accidentally locking it in would have been a bit a disaster considering that the backup had been lost. It feels strange leaving Hannah behind but she is a grown up now. We still have a lingering responsibility as she is still a student. Paris is the second half of her year abroad. She is studying French and Spanish with Catalan and has just finished six months in Toledo. Both her French as Spanish are now pretty impressive, at least from the perspective of someone whose Spanish extends to ordering two beers and whose French is frozen in time in 1978, the year of my Grade B French O’Level. I get by. Han is by now used to being left alone in strange cities, having made it to Toledo under her own steam. I figured it would make sense to go with her to Paris. Turning up alone in a big city is not a nice thing. I stayed 4 nights and achieved the main objective of finding her some accommodation. She has a student apartment in the 5eme Arrondissement with a Dutch girl and an Italian lad. A good place to be, near the Quartier Latin and the cafes of the left bank. Unfortunately the apartment doesn’t become available until the 20th so we’ve booked her into a cheap hotel just around the corner from the Gare Du Nord where she can catch the RER B to work. 15 nights in a hotel! The flat hunt was a bit of an eye opener. The first one we visited was cheap and would have been a great place to be had it not been for the guy whose flat it was. There was something about him that perhaps hinted at why he had been unable to let the room. The second was a nightmare. She was expected to share a room with a somewhat smelly girl and where the landlady kipped in the living room. A non starter. The third had real prospects compared with the first two. It was just around the corner from the Luxembourg RER B station, on the top floor of a nice old building. The problem with this one was that it was owned by a nice old lady. You got the feeling that it would have been somewhat stifling for a 20 year old girl after a bit of experience of life, and life in Paris at that. So now she’s behind me in Paris and I’m hurtling towards the English Channel and breakfast in London with her brother Tom. As I write we have passed a row of wind turbines. It must be a still day as the blades are pretty motionless. The train is half way between Paris and Arras. Big fields. Occasional villages. Lots of wind turbines. Looks cold out there. Paris was cold. This was a bit of a nuisance because every time we entered a cafe we had to peel off the layers or cook. Greenery is just starting to come though in some of the fields we pass. Growth from early planting at the end of last season, one assumes though I’m far from knowledgeable on the subject. Half the people around me on the train are asleep. The others are engrossed in gadgets as am I. A girl sat across from me is learning English. She has a dictionary and doing stuff with her iPad. We have just passed Bapaume, a place of significant historical significance from WW1 unless I am mistaken. Her name is Mlle Zena Saheli btw. The girl learning English. She has a letter of application open in front of her. Looks like she is a dancer. Not my business but it’s hard to not see what’s there in front of you. I have a coffee now. A medium latte, E3.20. I don’t drink much coffee but figured it was necessary on this trip. Either I spend the journey catching up on my zeds or I write stuff. So I’m writing stuff. When you look out at the frozen fields you really can imagine hte hardship of life in the trenches, especially at this time of year. It’s 10.14 Paris time. Hannah will be just starting to get up. No rush. Once she is checked into the hotel she has a few things she can be getting on with. Signing up for a Navigo and chasing up the bank to see why they haven’t been in touch with her to get her bank account sorted. Bloke next to me is asleep with his green sweater over his head. I took a picture although with the sun behind him it didn’t come out brilliantly. It’s going to be nice to get home and back into a routine for a week or so. I’m listiening to ELO on my earphones. I don’t have a huge choice of music on my phone so tend to listen to the same stuff time and time again. Normally I hop artists/tracks but I can’t be botherered to get that involved on the train. I’m not sure I’ve listened to the whole of ELO’s greatest hits (or whatever the album is called – I bought a load for my 50th Birthday bash 3 years ago). Before I forget I though the passport control set up in Gare Du Nord was a bit odd. You went through a French Passport Control and then separately through a British one. Why bother with two? Just a UK one should have sufficed I’d a thought. Anyway who am i to say? Eh? The fields are a bit snowier the further North we get. Hey we’re in a tunnel. I don’t think it can be the tunnel, the chunnel. I could be wrong. Hadn’t realised we were that near the coast. Must be it. No mobile data reception though. I got 4G on my way out. Probably because I’m still roaming and have data roaming switched off cos it’s a rip off. On the way out I got LTE but was still registered with O2 in the UK. Zena has packed her stuff away now and the green jumper is off his head. There’s something a little strange about being in a very long tunnel under the sea. It ain’t natural is it? We butcher our planet. Handy though if you want to get to central Paris quickly. I’m in seat 46 Car 14 btw. It’s handy for the cafe bar. There’s also a UK electrical socket but I’m in the aisle seat and I can’t be bothered to ask green jumper man to plug in my Chromebook. I’ve got enough juice to get me to London anyway. Only half an hiur until we’re due in London so must me bearly out of the tunnel now. Zena is having a bit of a kip. Feet up on the next seat in the foetus position. Her black trousers are torn at the knees. V trendy I suppose. Green jumper has opened a bag of mixed fruit and nut. Still lots of sleeping folk. Cmon guys. You can’t sleep your lives away. Do something. Oriental looking guy has woken up and is now checking his phone. I can hear the rustling of crisp packets or simlar despite having 10cc in my earphones. Also just had a bit of a shock. Lost this file I’ve been editing for two hours. Coming out of the tunnel and back in the land of connectivity I eventually found it on Google Drive. This is even though I was working on it offline. Wow. Cool. Back underground now. Maybe we are running through a site of Special Scientific Interest and they built dug the tunnel to avoid disturbing a butterfly, or a lizard. Or maybe someone put a hill in the way. I dunno. We interrupt this ad hoc dialogue to tell you that we are shortly arriving at Ebbsfleet. I suppose someone might want to get off there. In fact a woman has stirred and picked up her suitcase. As long as she doesn’t touch my bag we are all happy. Ebbsfleet is clearly convenient if you don’t want to haul yourself into Central London to catch the train. They didn’t have a similar stop in France though. Oo a few people getting off here now. It’s an uninviting looking station. Overweight member of staff speaks into his walkie talkie on the platform. Whistles blow. Presumably in code. Largish bloke not given the go ahead to depart yet. must be someone still getting off train.He keeps looking up and down the platform. The driver has taken things into his own hands and we are off anyway. I’m going to upload this now as I don’t know how much more editing time I’ll have before the final subterranean segment of our journey. Ciao amigos. It’s good to be back.
February 4, 2015
The next adventure
So starts the next phase. The next adventure. Southbound through a freezing cold English countryside to catch the Eurostar to Paris. City of romance. Hannah is about to start a 6 month stint working for Air France at Charles De Gaulle Airport and she needs to find accommodation.
Dozens of castles are for sale in Italy, apparently.
Adventurous
Seemingly random words and phrases on a journey
The fields en route to the coast are bereft of animals. There is very little grass for them to eat.
Sheep!
going underground
rresurface into grrey frrench febrruary
it’s a month with not much going for it. batten down those hatches. shove another chair leg on the fire, Doreen.
winter has beauty only when it is at its harshest
winter has beauty only at its harshest
winter, harsh beauty
gap in cloud cover above
blue sky
hope
mistletoe visible through barren branches
passed a war cemetery with perhaps 40 or 50 gravestones