Can you remember the first book that really captured your imagination as a child?

For me it was a story about a man called Mr Flop who was a flower collector. Mr Flop gathered up faded and dying flowers and whisked them off on a flying apple-tree branch (sort of prototype of Harry Potter’s Nimbus 2000) to the Kingdom of Flowers where they ‘regained their lost beauty and perfume and became more beautiful than ever’.

I loved the idea, but even more appealing was that Mr Flop whisked off the young heroine for a magical visit to the Kingdom on his flying branch. And what was the young heroine’s name? Alice? Dorothy? Wendy? No, they’d already had their fun. It was Laurette.

Continue reading Can you remember the first book that really captured your imagination as a child?

Speak Out: In Praise of Brave Women

Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst being arrested after protesting near Buckingham Palace in London, May 22, 1914. Courtesy of Wikimedia.org, Wikipedia Commons.

Sometimes it takes a brave woman to make things change – Emmeline Pankhurst, in the battle for suffrage for British women, Rosa Parks for the US Civil Rights Movement, and others like them.

Blog readers will be familiar with my admiration for inspirational role models, female and male. I’ve written about Simone Veil, Michel de Montaigne, the Brontë sisters, Nadia Murad, Joseph Kessel, Anne Lister and Helena Whitbread, David Hockney, Albert Camus, Malala Yousafzai, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and others.    

Today’s post, the last of 2023, gets passionate about two women prepared to risk their lives in order to speak out for human rights.

Masih Alinejad, the beautiful woman who wears a white flower in her hair, has become a well-known media personality. Born in Iran in 1976, she fled the country in 2009 after incurring the wrath of the authorities for her activism. Her story about growing up in a poor working class village before going on to become an internationally-acclaimed, award-winning journalist, is told in The Wind in My Hair, My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran.

Since 2014, she’s lived in exile in New York, where she became a familiar figure in the neighbourhood, handing out flowers from her garden, dedicated to her family in Iran who have suffered harassment and intimidation since she left.  But in 2020 she was forced to leave her home after the FBI informed her that others, more sinister, had been watching, and that she was the target of a kidnapping plot. Four Iranian agents were arrested and charged. But Masih’s ordeal was not over. In January 2023, three other men were charged, this time with attempting to assassinate her.

Masih refuses to be intimidated, and her interviews, a tour de force of eloquence and passion, never fail to move (there’s a selection on YouTube). In 2023 she was named one of Time Magazine’s ‘Women of the Year’ for her courage in continuing to speak out and to fight for ‘a more equal world’.  Her social media campaigns for the rights of women, followed by millions, came to particular prominence in 2014 when she invited women to post pictures of themselves removing their hijab on her Facebook page.

For many, the enforced wearing of the hijab, introduced by the new Islamic Republic in 1979, symbolises a more general form of subjugation in a male-dominated society where discriminatory laws relegate women to second-class citizens, what Aminejad calls ‘gender apartheid’. The response to her Facebook invitation was overwhelming.

But the protests were to gain a new impetus through a tragic event. In September 2022, a young Kurdish-Iranian woman was arrested by the morality police for appearing in public bareheaded. Her death, two days after her arrest , caused an international outcry and sparked unprecedented anti-regime demonstrations. The name ‘Mahsa Amini’ became known all over the world.

The Iranian authorities shut down Internet, but people like Masih Alinejad, British actress Nazanin Boniadi, and others continued to  tweet news filtering through about what was happening. The official verdict, a heart attack followed by a coma, was contradicted by several witnesses reporting that Mahsa had been savagely beaten by the police, with leaked medical scans suggesting that death had been caused by a stroke resulting from head injuries. The hashtag #MahsaAmini was retweeted more than 80 million times, and the slogan #Woman Life Freedom became a rallying cry as women all over the country refused tyranny and tore off their hijabs, supported by their menfolk.   (Mohsen Shekari was the first man to be hanged in the aftermath of the protests, on December 8th 2022. He was 22 years old.)

In spite of the target on her back, and the mental anguish of knowing the consequences to her family, Masih continues to draw attention the plight of Iranian women, and their inspirational fight for the right to live freely which has resulted in arrest and death for hundreds.  In a huge boost for the movement, the 2023 Nobel Peace prize was awarded to another heroic figure, Narges Mohammadi, Vice President of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, who has served repeated terms in prison in Iran. The award was received on her behalf by her 17-year-old twins who live in exile in Paris. Mohammadi, recipient of the 2021 Franco-German Prize for Human Rights, is currently in jail for ‘spreading propaganda’.

Does mankind have ‘an instinct to inhumanity’? This was the question asked by Michel De Montaigne, the great Renaissance humanist, back in the 1580s. For him, cruelty was the vice that surpassed all others and its most skilled practitioners were not wild animals but ‘human monsters…minds so monstrous as to be capable of committing murder just for pleasure … inventing unusual tortures and new ways of killing.’

 Reacting to the Hamas atrocities of October 7th this year, a date of pure infamy, another beautiful woman born in a small village, this one in Africa, Assita Kanko, Belgian member of the European Parliament, gave a magnificently fiery speech on October 28th in which she expressed her shock at the attitude of one of her colleagues.

I really don’t know where you have been staying the past days but maybe you were on the moon or anywhere else but have you seen what happened in Israel? Have you seen that people went into houses to find human beings to bring them outside to kill, kidnap, or kill the babies just because they are Jews? Do you remember history? Do you remember what happened on European soil…did you see that a teacher was killed in France last Friday, that today marks three years (since) the assassination and beheading of Samuel Paty? Why don’t you speak up against the violation of our rights and our values in Europe ?…  Why won’t you speak against that?…Shame on you!’

Montaigne would have approved. Assita, this year’s recipient of the Oriana Fallaci Prize for her work on the protection of European values and the affirmation of women’s rights and equal opportunities, was born in Burkina Faso in 1980. Like many women of her generation, she underwent genital mutilation (for more information on that practice, read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s remarkable, moving book Infidel) . Her epiphany occurred on December 13th, 1998 when her mentor, investigative journalist Norbert Zongo, was killed and burned in his car by the regime.

I was 18, but I could not stay indifferent. We had to fight. For him and for freedom. No democracy can exist or survive without a free press,’ she wrote on her Twitter page @Assita_Kanko. ‘We don’t only need the separation of powers, of which Montesquieu spoke, but also the strength of this fourth power: a critical and independent press…. In my room in a small remote village in Burkina Faso, I read and understood that it was not only necessary to go out on the streets to defend one man, but also to ensure that justice was done and to protect democracy.’  

She is currently fighting to have the crime of rape based on lack of consent included in EU legislation and has spoken out frankly about  what happened to Israeli women during the terrorist attack:

“Shani Louk was young, she wanted to enjoy her life. Instead her life ended in the hands of Hamas. She was thrown onto this lorry, and we saw Hamas men dragging her half-naked with this lorry around and spitting on her, shouting “Allah Akbar”. For me, this image is worth more than 1,000 investigations, this image is stronger than 1,000 words, this image says it all. She and all others were someone’s daughters. How could the world let them down? Anyone who isn’t outraged and doesn’t stand up to what we’ve seen, frankly I don’t know whether that person deserves to be called a feminist or a humanist, but it’s a betrayal. It’s a betrayal of the cause of women and it’s a betrayal of all Jews, it’s a betrayal of humanity

Castigating the silence not simply from their ‘sisters in arms’ ( a form of hypocrisy which has prompted the hashtag #MeTooUnlessYouAreAJew) but also from respected institutions such as top Ivy League Universities (‘a historic moment in which the moral confusion of America’s elite universities was laid bare’), she told the Parliament on November 22nd:

“Today, I have a question, a pressing question for some Western feminists. How can you remain silent, when women and girls are raped, tortured, their bodies carried around naked and spat on by bearded men shouting Allah Akbar?

Then you can never call yourself a feminist again.

Every day including today some western hypocritical feminists should be ashamed of their silence on the horror that Hamas men inflicted to women and girls on 7 October And that includes big names we were once proud of.  Why are their lips sealed, and their heart of stone, when it comes to the excruciating pain of Jewish women? The MeToo movement and so-called intersectional feminists do not care about all women. If they remain silent, it means they have lied to us about their commitment to women’s rights. Their actions support the oppressor, not the victims.’

On December 13th, in a TV interview with Stella Escobado she discusses the behaviour of institutions like UN Women, who took more than fifty days to condemn what had happened on October 8th.  Escabdao congratulates her on her outstanding bravery in speaking out, to which she replies

 ‘It is a moment in history when you have to speak.’

Indeed.

So, as 2023 draws to a close, should we be reaching for the bottle of gin or the hemlock?

Not according to my source of infinite wisdom and humanity, the aforementioned Montaigne. At the end of 107 essays and 200,000  words, many of which detail his considerable personal sufferings and the appallingly violent times in which he lived (the Civil Wars of Religion lasting from 1562 to 1598) he has this to say:

En ce qui me concerne, donc, j’aime la vie… ‘ As for me, I love life…’

It’s the kind of unquenchable life-affirming spirit shown by the young girls deported to Auschwitz, recounted in Simone’s Veil’s biography A Life . As they arrived and were stripped of their possessions, ‘comic figures for a jeering audience’, one of Veil’s friends hung on to a small bottle of perfume. ‘They’re going to take it,’ she said, ‘but I’m not going to give it to them.’ And the young women splashed themselves from head to toe in Lanvin’s most iconic perfume, Arpège, created by a mother for her daughter, a last gesture of defiant femininity before being forced to put on the rags of the dispossessed.

It’s the spirit which prompts us to protect the life of our children, as shown by Yarden Roman-Gat at Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th, when she, her husband Alon and their three-year-old daughter Geffen, were pursued by Hamas terrorists. As they were running away, Yarden, who was carrying Geffen, made a decision. She passed Geffen to Alon, because he could run faster. ‘I had no choice. It was a no-brainer,’ she said. Her act of sacrifice, succeeded. Although she did not know it, Alon and Geffen managed to escape, while she was caught and dragged to the car half-naked, fearing she would be raped. But the terrorists had another idea. She was their ‘trophy’, to be driven through Gaza, an exhibit for the frenzied, partying crowds. * 

It’s the spirit shown by Israeli hostage Rimon Kirsht. Released after 53 days in captivity, dressed in Hello Kitty pyjamas, another ‘comic figure for a jeering audience’, she stared down her tormentors and walked to the ambulance head held high.

Last week in Iran,  a 70-year-old man, was arrested for singing and dancing. The result? All over the country, others have been joining in, singing and dancing, to Life and to Freedom.

From this pagan, life-loving blogger, a very Joyeux Noël, and a toast to ‘La vie’!

Drink up, sing, dance, and speak out! ❤️

*After hiding under bushes for 12 hours, Alon and Geffen managed to escape.  Yarden was released on November 29 after 54 days in captivity, a solitary prisoner guarded day and night.

Book news, book news....David Braddock is back in a deerstalker hat in John Dolan’s new release Possessed by Death. Don’t miss it!

Simone Veil, A Woman of the Century

The recent film by Olivier Dahan ‘Simone, Le Voyage du Siècle’

Simone Veil, iconic figure of the 20th century and a role model for millions, died on June 30th, 2017. She is back in the news once more after the release of  Olivier Dahan’s  film, Simone, le voyage du siecle,  in which she is portrayed by two actresses, Rebecca Marder, (young Simone) and Elsa Zylberstein, (Simone aged 36 to 87). Both are excellent, but it is Zylberstein who is remarkable through her physical and psychological reincarnation of her character. The actress immersed herself in the role for a year, putting on 9 kilos, walking like Veil, talking like her, reading what she’d written.

‘I wanted her soul to be at my side,’ she explained (‘je voulais que son âme m’accompagne’).

Watching the film last week reminded me just how much a sorely fractured France, indeed a sorely fractured world, needs leaders of her stature. In a reminder of what she achieved, I’m reposting below extracts from the blog I wrote shortly after her death: Portrait of a great lady, July 13th 2017.

***

‘Nous vous aimons, Madame.’

With three simple words, ‘we love you’, Jean D’Ormesson, in 2010, welcomed Simone Veil to the ‘temple of the French language’, the Académie Française. On June 30th  this year, as news of her death broke in France, his sentiment was echoed in the tributes of an entire nation. In a world of political tarnish, Simone Veil gleamed gold. She was respected, adored, revered even. In the outpouring of emotion on June 30th, many said they were ‘in mourning’ for one who will remain ‘immortal’.

Who was this extraordinary woman with an extraordinary destiny, a woman who, for the space of a few days, achieved the miracle of uniting a country renowned for its bitter quarrels and divisions? The woman whose beauty left admirers lost for words, and who, with one look from her turquoise eyes could make grown men tremble and inspire adoration in those who had lost hope?

We all need role models, examples, people who set a standard, who inspire us to do our best. Heroes and heroines. Open any magazine and you’ll see the latest contenders. Personalities from the world of arts and culture, from popular entertainment. How many come from the world of politics? And how many will stand the test of time?

The Panthéon, in Paris, is the resting place for many who have left their imprint on French history: Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Jean Jaurès, Marie Curie, Jean Moulin…Simone Veil, who, growing up as Simone Jacob, youngest of four children in a secular Jewish family living in Nice, could hardly have imagined that one day she would be laid to rest in their company, an inspiration for both men and women, a true French heroine.

Back in 2010, in the solemn ceremony marking the election of a new member to one of France’s most august institutions, the Académie Française, Veil, like those before her, wore the traditional costume of the Academy, ‘l’habit vert’, and carried the traditional sword. But her sword was engraved with a number: 78651. It was the number tattooed on her left arm in April 15th 1944 when she arrived at the extermination camp of Auschwitz Birkenau. She was 16. Although she would survive and go on to become a great stateswoman in the country from which she was deported, her mother Yvonne, her brother Jean, and father André, would never return to their homeland. They were part of the six million murdered simply because they were Jews.

Two striking characteristics of Simone Veil were her humanity and her passion for justice. In her lucid and moving biography, Une Vieshe says that her experience as a deportee gave her ‘an acute sensitivity to everything that, in our human relations with one another, leads to the humiliation and abasement of others.’ This awareness gave her a special perspective which rejected all extremes and aimed at reconciliation between often contradictory concepts. Nicolas Sarkozy, protégé and close friend, described her as ‘adhering to no ideology, having paid too high a price herself for the madness of ideologues.’ In a TV interview she talked about ‘being on the left’ for some issues, ‘on the right’ for others. She was a traditionalist who believed in progress, a woman whose past was overshadowed by tragedy but who looked to the future with hope; in the words of D’Ormesson ‘la tradition même, et la modernité incarnée’ (the embodiment of tradition, and the incarnation of modernity).

Recalling that first terrible day at Auschwitz, she describes how she, her mother, and sister Milou, along with other women, were herded into the showers, then dumped onto benches, naked, while the ‘kapos’ paraded up and down in front of them, laughing, making humiliating comments and prodding their bare flesh like housewives inspecting meat at the butcher’s. ‘We were comic figures for a jeering audience.’ In an image which conveys the nightmare of those hours, Veil writes it was like ‘the horror of suddenly finding yourself in a medieval painting, one of those where you are in the group of people who have fallen into hell.’

She never forgot the smell of the camp–‘fetid, made up of rot and mud and the smell of the smoke from the crematorium…We lived enveloped in the permanent stench of burning’. What impression must all of this have made on a young girl who grew up ‘in a paradise’, breathing the perfumed air and sea breezes of Nice, vibrant  capital of the Riviera?

The beautiful baie des anges, Nice, seen from the colline du château

As they were stripped of their possessions by the guards, one of her friends hung on to a small bottle of perfume. ‘They’re going to take it,’ she said. ‘But I’m not going to give it to them.’ And the young women splashed themselves from head to toe in Lanvin’s famous perfume, Arpège, a last gesture of defiant femininity before they would have to put on the rags of the dispossessed. That perfume remained Veil’s favourite, worn until she died.

How did she, and others like her, manage not just to survive such a hell, but to find a way to go on afterwards, more victors than victims?

Writing about the carefree ‘joie de vivre’ of her childhood, the warmth and unity of family life, her education in civic, republican values, Simone Veil concludes ‘we received the best arms with which to face life.’ Elsewhere she talks about the human capacity to preserve the will to live. Her mother, who died of typhus on the death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen one month before the liberation of the camps, remained a role model for her daughter. ‘She was,’ she says, ‘good and generous…’ Simone was younger, harder, more of a rebel. She defended her mother from those who tried to steal her food and, on the terrible march through the snow, from those who tried to hang on to her for support. She only remembers crying twice, once when she was reprimanded by Milou, the second time when she found out her other sister, Denise, a member of the Resistance, was still alive, a survivor of Ravensbrück.

The flint and the fire. It was this toughness and this baptism of fire that reinforced the ideals that would guide her through life, a respect for others and their differences, and a desire to create a better world where what she and millions had suffered would never be repeated. She would demonstrate time after time in her future career that her aim was not to please, not to follow a party-political line, but to listen to her conscience. And in a life of battles, the year 1974 would stand out, as she prepared one of the most controversial laws in French history.

But that was still in the future. In 1945 Simone Jacob returned to France where she discovered with bewilderment that many simply did not want to talk about what had happened. Even worse was the reaction in some quarters that, because she and other had survived, this was obvious proof that ‘things weren’t as bad as all that’ in the camps. For months she experienced a feeling of unreality and disconnection. Fortunately she was soon to meet the man she married, and who would remain her rock and companion for 67 years, Antoine Veil, who died in 2013, the same year that saw the death of her sister Denise. With Antoine she founded a family, and after the birth of her third son, took the decision to return to her studies and a future career. The Simone of legend was on the move.

Her initial fight, after becoming a magistrate, was to obtain better conditions for prisoners. But as she rose through the ranks to the post of Minister of Health in the government of Giscard D’Estaing, she approached the first of the truly important battles that would stand out as landmarks in her personal career and in the history of France.

The country was changing. It had gone through the social upheaval of May 1968; the women’s movement was gaining momentum. In 1971, a shock manifesto hit the pages of Le Nouvel Observateur. Written by Simone De Beauvoir, it was signed by 343 women who all admitted to having had abortions. Their aim was to pressurise the government into legalising a risky procedure undertaken every year by thousands of women, those unable to afford the price of a legal abortion abroad. In 1972 events took an even more dramatic turn when human rights lawyer Gisèle Halimi defended a 16-year-old girl charged with having an illegal abortion after being raped by one of her schoolmates.

Something had to be done. Giscard, and his Prime Minister, Jacques Chirac, knew the topic was highly controversial for the majority of their party members. Who to entrust with the unpopular job of trying to change the law?

‘We can no longer close our eyes to the 300, 000 abortions which, every year, mutilate the women of this country’. These were Simone Veil’s words to a packed National Assembly consisting of 481 male deputies and 9 females on November 26, 1974.

There followed a marathon debate of unprecedented violence lasting three days and two nights. Melodramatic speeches and demonstrations took place. A recording of the heartbeats of a foetus was passed round the chamber, with the prophecy that the law, if passed, would produce twice as many victims every year as the bomb on Hiroshima. Veil herself was subjected to abuse and insults with references to embryos ‘thrown into ovens’, abattoirs piled with the corpses of ‘little men’, ‘Nazi barbarity’ and even ‘genocide’.  She was insulted in the street, her children were threatened and her home and car daubed with swastikas.

Simone Veil addressing the Assemblée Nationale

Yet she continued to plead her case with unflagging courage and lucidity. ‘No woman undertakes an abortion lightly,’ she told the Assembly. Refusing to descend to the level of insults of her opponents, she reiterated her faith in the younger generation: ‘they are courageous, capable of enthusiasm and sacrifices like anyone else. Let us put our trust in them…’

The ordeal took its toll. In a 2004 interview she admits she never imagined being the object of such intense hatred, and one famous clip shows her with her head in her hands. For many, however, the enduring image of that time is of an erect, dignified figure in trademark Chanel suit and pearls, hair swept back in an impeccable chignon, looking for all the world like the person she was, a wife, a mother, a member of the middle classes, ‘la tradition même’ yet, at the same time, ‘la modernité incarnée.’

On November 29th, 1974, the Loi Veil was adopted by 284 votes to 189. Bloody, but unbowed, Madame la Ministre could breathe for a while before getting caught up in the two other major tasks that awaited her: the vital preservation of the past, a memorial to the Holocaust, the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, of which she would be president for five years, and the creation of the new: the re-unification of Europe, and Franco-German reconciliation.

In Une Vie she writes that she never got over her mother’s death. ‘Every day she is with me, and what I have done is thanks to her.’ In 1945, as Yvonne lay dying, she said ‘Ne veuillez jamais de mal aux autres, nous savons trop ce que c’est’ (never wish harm to others, we know only too well what that is). When, in 1979, Simone Veil was elected first President of the brand new European Parliament, it was the memory of her mother that spurred her to battle for the dignity and freedom of future generations, and their right to a world of ‘never again’.

Her disappearance comes at a time when the European dream has dimmed for many initially carried along by the wave of optimism she symbolised in 1979. On the wider political scene, with its posturing narcissists and vulgar brawlers, it’s hard to think of anyone who comes near the standards set for more than half a century by this modest woman, number 78651, who once said ‘I have the feeling that, the day I die, my last thoughts will be of the Holocaust.’ In the moving eulogy given by her son, Pierre-François, he recounts that her last word to those gathered by her bedside was ‘Merci.’

On social media following her death a prayer was taken up by hundreds of voices: ‘Simone Veil sur nous’ (Veil being pronounced the same way as the word ‘veille’ = watch over).

‘Simone, watch over us.’

This blog was written in memory of Simone Veil, and the victims in the attack on her native city of Nice, July 14th 2016.

***

Afterword, July 30th 2023

Early this month, in Veil’s beloved country, a week of unbelievable violence laid bare a fractured society: those who love France and those who hate it.  A year earlier, in the USA, the Historic Roe V Wade was reversed, bringing the question of women’s rights to abortion back to the table. In the UK and elsewhere, the very concept of womanhood has been challenged, with attempts to remove the word ‘woman’ itself and replace it by insulting and demeaning alternatives.  In a topsy-turvy world, brave women and their supportive menfolk in Iran are ready to defy the morality police and die for freedom, while in France, the country of human rights, attempts to impose rules on the way women dress and behave are increasing. Also in France, as elsewhere, anti-semitism is on the rise, but again in this Alice in Wonderland universe, the traditional culprits – extreme right political parties and ultra conservative Catholics – have been replaced by far Left ideologues and hardline Islamists.

Memorial to the Shoah defaced, ‘morts aux juifs’ heard during riots in Nanterre July 2023

Meanwhile the vision of a harmonious ‘United States of Europe’ dear to the heart of its first parliamentary president and many who believed in that dream has been tarnished by greed and corruption  while the vexed question of sovereignty – national versus ‘pooled’ , one of the contributory factors to Brexit, is also causing tensions between Brussels and eastern nations who remember only too well the years of Soviet hegemony when they had no sovereignty at all.

Is all of this depressing?

The Voltairean sceptic bashing out these words is ready to say ‘sauve qui peut’.  The foolish Romantic proofreader looking forward to a G and T in the garden with the MDM and the nightingale is more optimistic, remembering what Veil said about ‘ordinary people’.

Simone Veil, President of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, returns to Auschwitz

In a ceremony held at the Pantheon in Paris in 2007, in homage to ‘les Justes’ of France (the ‘Righteous among the nations’ –  non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust), Simone Veil gave a moving address, expressing the respect, affection and gratitude of all who owed their lives to ‘ordinary people’.

Many, she said, of such ‘ordinary people’ were unknown, had died, or didn’t want to be recognised for what they had done. While in the Netherlands and Greece, 80 percent of the Jewish population were arrested and exterminated, three quarters of French Jews would avoid capture.

‘I am convinced,’ she said, ‘that there will always be men and women, of all origins and in all countries, who are capable of the best…I would like to believe that moral force and individual conscience can prevail… These walls will forever resound to the echo of your voices, you, the Righteous of France who give us reason to hope.’

Amen to that.

Detail from a drawing by Gordon Seward, property of the author, copyright Gordon Seward
Detail from a drawing by Gordon Seward, property of the author, copyright Gordon Seward

 

 

The Hippy Hippy Shakes Season 2: Voyage into the Future

 

Pierre-Paul Riquet Hospital at CHU Purpan Toulouse

In 2015 I got a new bionic hip and wrote a blog called ‘The Hippy Hippy Shakes (I know, I know…) My main worry at the time was that an inferno would break out and I would wake up hipless in the operating theatre and there would be a lot of firemen running around and a bunch of surgeons lying on the floor in singed gowns and an abandoned drill and a size four stem and ceramic head on the table just to my left. (I have an active imagination.)

Last month it was time for the Maître de Maison to get his new spare part – and time for a totally different experience: “The Hippy Hippy Shakes Season 2: Journey into The Future”.

While I spent eight days in hospital followed by three weeks in a rehab centre, it was all over for the MDM in a matter of hours. Patient and carer (me) departed our four-house hamlet in the Tarn at 6 a.m., checked into the hospital in Toulouse at 7 a.m., and were back in the hamlet with the nightingale and the owl the following afternoon. Post-surgical physiotherapy began at our wonderful AB Kinés centre where we have season tickets (I am still being treated for shoulder complications after last August’s broken arm).

Journey into the Future: Cité de l’Espace, Toulouse

Huge strides have been made in the field of medicine: the MDM’s experience had a definite futuristic, sci-fi feel to it, in keeping with the growing reputation of Occitania’s capital city over the last fifty years.  It’s here that Concorde was developed, followed by Airbus and Ariane. La ville rose, Cité des violettes, now has a third label – Cité de l’Espace. Toulouse is also home to one of the country’s top university hospitals (CHU – Centre Hospitalier et Universitaire), a centre of excellence with different hubs covering health care, teaching, research and innovation, and which is systematically ranked from 1st to 4th place among the other 30 similar institutions. Linking three of these hubs is another futuristic invention, the Téléo, an urban arial ropeway inaugurated in 2022, now used by 6000 passengers a day. Its ten-minute glide above the city allows travellers to cover 3 kilometres in 10 minutes, avoiding the traffic jams while enjoying the views across to the Pyrenees.

Although his hospitalisation was much shorter than mine, the MDM’s journey into orthopaedic space was considerably longer, involving a tailor-made, hi-tech tool. Rewind to April and the first consultation with surgeon Nicolas Reina, who joined the hospital in 2018 as the youngest Professor of Orthopaedics in France. Kudos!  Professor Reina had previously spent a year in the UK as Clinical Fellow at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford, as well as in the US at the famous Mayo Clinic. More kudos!  The appointment was at the CHU Purpan, a huge campus with 7 different hospitals and a tramway running through the middle.

Tramway through the CHU Toulouse Purpan

Pierre-Paul Riquet, the hospital which houses the traumatology and orthopaedic surgery department, has six floors, endless corridors, banks of lifts, cafes and shops, a vast rooftop terrace, and a lot of people milling about talking into smartphones. As you walk through the doors you half expect to hear a disembodied voice saying ‘Welcome to Galactica!’  During the MDM’s hospitalisation, I resorted to taking photos of the route to his room after walking in never-ending circles the first time I left him and tried to get back.

Scattering breadcrumbs to find my way

That first day, the waiting room was packed with people all hoping for new hips and a new lease of life. After consultation with the Professor and his team, a date was fixed for last week in May, and things began to accelerate. We were handed over to the administrative and nursing staff and a date was set for a preliminary day of education (école des patients) starting at 7h 45 a.m. during which Professor Reina would give a presentation followed by a Q and A session, meetings with physiotherapists, nurses, anaesthetists and other medical personnel would take place, and the six patients in attendance would be able to enjoy a nice lunch together, chatting with a nurse.

A computer link was set up for the patient to log on to at home 35 days before the op, a vital (and somewhat mysterious) part of the process.

Back in the hamlet, the MDM activated the link and got launched on his daily ritual. Each morning he disappeared into the study to engage in cryptic communings with his laptop.

‘Who are you talking to?’ I asked at the end of the first week.

‘Oh it’s nothing, just Hortense.’

‘Hortense?’

A vision of a 19th-century heroine in a crinoline flashed across my mind. Wasn’t there a Hortense somewhere in Balzac who came to an unhappy end?

One of those 19th-century literary heroines in a crinoline

‘Yes, she wants me to measure my biceps.’

‘Pardon?’

‘And my calves. Can I borrow your tape measure?

Another day I spotted him carrying a large mirror. Peering into the study I saw him holding it in front of his face, mouth wide open.

‘Hortense wants to know if I can see my epiglottis,’ he said, catching me lurking in the doorway.

OK so we had definitely entered a fourth dimension. My suspicions were on high alert. This was no lady in a crinoline at the other end of the computer. This was a sci-fi Barbarella-like minx with designs on the MDM’s epiglottis and shapely calves.

I marched into the study determined to have it out with the sexy blonde in the fishnet tights.

‘Right. Show me this Hortense.’

With a long-suffering look, the MDM turned the laptop in my direction.

On the screen, a picture of a happy couple hiking through the mountains on Olympian hips. Not a fishnet in sight. Hortense was “Orthense”, a computer programme! Two differently-spelled words with same pronunciation.

The idea of having an operation is not something most of us look forward to with whoops of joy. In some cases it can be frighteningly impersonal, the lone patient struggling to understand what’s going on in an arcane medical world becoming  more specialised by the  day. I remember my own pre-op anxieties in 2015, having  consulted Dr Google (doesn’t everybody?):

I was now a bit of an expert. Acetabular cups, femoral stems, greater trochanter, lesser trochanter-the vocabulary was down pat, I just needed to figure out how to put it into sentences.’

Was there a way to involve the patient more fully in the hospitalisation experience, to lessen their anxiety and sense of abandonment in an unfamiliar world? Professor Reina  and his colleagues believed so. In a 2021 article in La Dépêche he talks about solutions to fill this gap in patient care, establishing a better quality of communication between busy doctors and their patients. Digikare, a local tech startup was brought in to help, and “Orthense” was born.  Starting 35 days before surgery, patients begin working with this digital companion to evaluate and manage their pain and to keep track of the different administrative documents required and the numerous appointments necessary at different stages in the process – X-rays, blood tests, nasal swabs, ECGs, consultations with the anaesthetist etc. The support programme continues for a year after the operation. As more and more data is fed into it, surgeons will also be able to predict the kind of patients who may be at risk and so avoid complications.

Trudging up that hill

It’s just over three weeks since the op. From Day 1, the MDM set out with his crutches and has been walking determinedly up that hill…. Now, with his wonderful new hip, he’s abandoned the crutches and even had a go at mowing the grass.  Yippee!

He’s also getting help from his digital sidekick Hortense/Orthense, who will be holding his virtual hand and not letting go until…  1st June 2024!

A resounding ‘merci et bravo!’ from the patient and his carer to:

  • Professor Reina and his brilliant team of medical and administrative personnel at CHU Toulouse Purpan for their professionalism and empathy.
  • The staff and volunteers of Le Laurier Rose, offering on-campus accommodation and a sympathetic ear to those stressed-out mortals accompanying patients.
  • Dr Marie-Madeleine Polomeni-Lucas, anaesthetist and specialist in hypnosis and pain relief at the Hôpital des enfants, CHU Purpan, for her precious friendship and psychological support throughout.
  • And, of course, Chère Hortense 😉

Back in the hamlet with his mower

PS All comments welcome in English et en français !

PPS Here’s a link to a video sent by Nancy Babcock. You can read her interesting comment in full below, but I didn’t know how to insert a hyperlink to the video in the comments -remember I’m a non-tecchie??

Beautiful Nice, where la douceur de vivre meets la dolce vita

 

View of Nice from the hotel on Cimiez Hill

This month’s blog gets passionate about a city and a hotel.

Readers may remember I have a bit of a thing for the delights of hotel-dwelling. In July 2015 I quoted Vladimir Nabokov, who lived for 16 years in the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland: ‘It avoids the nuisance of private ownership,’ he said. If by ‘nuisance,’ Vladimir was referring to menu-planning, shopping, cooking, washing up, floor-mopping, bed-making, scrubbing the shower tiles and such-like, I am right there with him. (Although such nuisances were probably Véra’s cross to bear as they hadn’t invented househusbands in those days.)

Vieux Nice

At the end of February, leaving behind our own nuisances, the MDM and I headed off to check out the historic city of Nizza la Bella, as it’s known in the local language, Niçois or Nissart (a variety of Occitan), and the pleasures of hotel-life.  We were hoping to find another establishment to add to our list of twinkling stunners, places where, in addition to luxurious amenities, first class service, and maximum pampering, there’s an extra special ‘wow’ factor making for a truly memorable hotel.

In the past I’ve got passionate about the Radisson Blu Edwardian in Manchester (iconic Free Trade Hall, Halle orchestra, Disraeli, Charles Dickens, the Manchester suffragettes) and La Maison Bakéa in Cordes-sur-Ciel (13th century stones, suits of armour, galleried courtyards and the ghosts of massacred Cathars). Closer to home and heart is the Hôtel du Grand Balcon in Toulouse (dashing French aviation pioneers, the shade of Saint-Exupéry and the view across the place du Capitole). And of course, l’Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz has had frequent mentions – love-gift of Napoleon III to his Empress, dazzling Belle Epoque magnificence and views across ‘the queen of beaches’ (not to mention the setting for a scene or two in those French Summer Novels 😉 ).

Looking out from our bedroom at the Petit Palais

This time we were off to another ‘palais’– l’ Hôtel Petit Palais, a small hotel in a former private villa also dating from the aptly-named Belle Epoque. Leaving a sunny Tarn behind, we stepped off the plane in Nice to a thorough drenching. The rain and wind buffeting the coast had forced the cancellation of the closing ceremony of the city’s famous Carnival.  Happily, the weather picked up, allowing us to explore the 2nd most visited tourist destination in France after Paris. Its unique setting, between mountains and sea, the curve of its beautiful ‘Bay of Angels’, rimmed by the 7-kilometre promenade des Anglais, the imposing silhouette of the Colline du Château, on whose summit stood the medieval town – all have famously inspired artists.

The breath-taking Baie des Anges seen from the colline du château

Before I’d even set foot in the city, Nice felt familiar thanks to the paintings of Berthe Morisot, Raoul Dufy, Chagall and of course Matisse, whose view across the sweep of the bay from his windows at Hôtel de la Mediterranée and Le Beau Rivage was a constant source of inspiration. He describes his amazement at the colour of the sea: ‘an unearthly radiance…the blue of sapphires, of the peacock’s wing, an Alpine glacier and the kingfisher… it gleams, it is translucent, its shines as though lit up from below.’

Tempête à Nice, Musée Matisse

Matisse came to Nice in 1917 to recover from a bout of bronchitis. The weather was so dismal he nearly headed back to Issy-Les-Moulineaux. His painting, Tempête à Nice, which we saw in the Matisse Museum, is more Stygian-gloom than unearthly radiance, but fortunately for him, and for art lovers all round the world, the sun came out, the colours changed, and Matisse stayed on until his death in 1954, leaving us with those paintings.

There’s something endlessly fascinating about windows in art, symbolic openings on to other worlds and universes.

Intérieur à Nice, 1922 by Henri Matisse

Persiennes roses, Nice by Gordon Seward

In The Cowshed, two paintings of Nice hang on the walls. One, a reproduction of Interieur à Nice, 1922, exudes an atmosphere of tranquillity and voluptuous farniente, with Mme Matisse taking a siesta on against a background of louvred ‘persienne’ shutters opening on to palm trees. The other, an original (fanfare!) is the work of brilliant artist Gordon Seward, and features those shutters once again, pink this time- Persiennes roses à Nice, 2002.

A week isn’t long to get to know a great city, but we packed in as much as possible, trying to get a feel of what it was like to be a genuine Nissard, to live in this buzzing vibrant place where the inhabitants have a strong sense of community and pride in their local culture and rich history. Ever since 1861, a resounding  ‘cannon shot’ is fired from the top of the hill at noon. According to legend, this custom is in memory of Sir Thomas Coventry who used it as a reminder to his wife to get the lunch served for himself and his men (no househusbands in those days either).

‘In memory of our angels’, memorial to the 86 victims of July 14th 2016 in the grounds of the Villa Massena

The exception to this tradition occurs on the Fête Nationale, July 14th, a stark reminder of the day on which that sense of community was shattered  in the Islamic terrorist attack of 2016; a poignant memorial to the 86 victims stands in the grounds of the Villa Massena.

Our downtown flâneries averaged 5 to 6 kilometres per day, so we were ready for the reward that awaited every evening, 100 or so metres above the coast on the hill of Cimiez, another world, another Nice.

Up here are no clanging trams, hooting traffic, and roaring motorbikes. The contrast with the effervescence of the city below is dramatic. To wind your way through these tranquil narrow lanes is to step back in time, to the glittering era of the Belle Epoque. Sumptuous mansions sit behind wrought iron gates in verdant parks full of birdsong. It’s a tree-lovers paradise – cypresses, palms, green oaks, ancient olives, magnolias, towering pines. Lemon and orange blossom time was over, but branches lit up with bright globes of oranges overhung the walls, occasionally dropping a ripe gift at your feet.

Those royals knew a good thing when they saw it

When looking for a hotel back in November we’d foregone those in the centre, choosing instead to follow in the footsteps of Queen Victoria. Those royals knew a good thing when they saw it. Victoria had already spent time at the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz in the early 1890s; in 1897 she and her fleet of staff took up residence in a hotel specially built for her in Cimiez- the Excelsior Regina Palace. The vast 200-room edifice was built in just 18 months, which shows what can be done given the right (royal?) motivation. Here, Her Majesty could gaze down at the panorama of the coast, or take a turn in the park across the road where, today, the restored ruins of the 1st century Roman arena lie close to the Musée Matisse. When the Regina was sold and turned into appartments, Matisse bought three of them, continuing to work in this vast space until the end of his life. He and his wife are buried in the nearby cemetery.

The hotel gardens, rainy evening at dusk

Slightly lower down the hill from this majestic edifice is Le Petit Palais.  We arrived that first day, wet, cold, and a bit dispirited, but the welcome was just as warm as it had been cracked up to be in the glowing reviews.  An excellent margarita whipped up by Kevin put colour in our cheeks. We quickly succumbed to the hotel’s charm, its soothing décor of pastels contrasting with exotic wall papers, the tranquil garden oasis outside, the unhurried pace –  all induced a feeling of relaxation and well-being.

Each evening, after our daily hike, we would retire to our room with its view across the rooftops to the bay and the coastline. Wrapped in fluffy bathrobes we would recline on the cloud-soft mattress, like Madame Matisse taking her siesta; as we drifted off to sleep, painted bluebirds and peacocks spread protective wings (and tails) above our heads.

Under the wings of bluebirds

But perhaps most charming of all was the human touch. Many reviews mention the ‘family atmosphere,’ generated through the warmth and conviviality of the personnel. And indeed, getting to know Philippe, Daniel and Kevin on the front desk, Christina and Emmanuelle in charge of the dining room, we had the impression of being privileged guests at the home of long-lost relatives (the cultured, aristocratic branch) where hospitality and l’art de vivre were the mots du jour.

It’s impossible to spend time in Nice without becoming aware of its Italian roots. Through its geographical position, it was fated to be one of those territories disputed by different kingdoms and dynasties. Though it became French in 1860, there was much local resistance, encouraged by famous general and son of the city, Giuseppe Garibaldi, but such protests were finally quashed by French troops sent in to put down a three-day uprising in February 1871 – the ‘Niçard Vespers’.

Italianate facades place Garibaldi

Today, though, the Italian connection is still much in evidence. The border is a mere 42 kilometres distant; the architecture in the two main squares, Garibaldi and Massena, bears an unmistakable Italian stamp with its red, yellow and ochre façades. Despite the bustle, the downtown vibe is pretty relaxed; on the café terraces, a popular drink is Aperol Spritz, a prosecco-based aperitive, more salute than santé. It all makes for an irresistible blend – ‘the sweet life’ – or as they say it so well in both Italian and French, la douceur de vivre, la dolce vita

Salute!

Copyright Laurette Long 2023

The Noble Art of Letter-Writing

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné (1626-1696) attribué à Claude Lefèbvre, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marquise_de_sevignee.jpg

‘May this year be happier than those which preceded it; may peace, repose and health be yours in place of all the fortunes you do not possess but which you deserve; in short, may your future days be woven with silk.’

As my New Year’s greeting to readers, I can’t think of better words than those written by Madame de Sévigné to her cousin Le Compte de Bussy-Rabotin in January 1687. They are also a fitting introduction to today’s blog, which gets passionate about letters, and teachers.

There’s currently there’s a bit of a revolution going on at La Poste, France’s postal service. Reduced delivery services, the abolition of  the famous ‘timbre rouge’ (first-class stamp), replacing it by a more ‘environmentally friendly’ on-line service – these and other changes have provoked cries of outrage from users, and even an article in  The Times, asking if this spells the end  of ‘three centuries of glorious correspondence’, of ‘wonderful epistolary prose’ much of which has made its way into print for the delight and education of future generations.

Fascinating insights into the lives of authors

I am an ardent reader, and writer, of letters. On the book-shelves are the collected letters of Flaubert, Monet, Tolkien and others; piled up on another shelf are boxes labelled: ‘Letters, 1980s, Letters, 1990s’ etc. Some of the oldest are from my grandmother, whose blue airmail missives regularly crossed the Atlantic, recounting family news and dispensing such gems as ‘I hope you are keeping well my dear take a good stiff glass of Andrew’s or Enos in a morning to clear your stomach, inner cleanliness you can’t beat it and you feel on top of the world.’ (In a similar elan of more appealing prophylactic advice, Madame De Sévigné wrote to her daughter ‘If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you.’)

Boxes and boxes of precious letters

One famous writer, and one letter in particular, have been much on my mind in recent weeks.

In November, returning to my  (never-ending) Work in Progress, I encountered an unforeseen problem. The manuscript is peppered with quotes from favourite authors and artists which I had naively thought I could share under the terms of what is known as ‘fair use/fair dealing’ i.e. the right to use short quotes by authors still under copyright. Further research sent me plummeting down a legal rabbit hole. Loosely speaking, most writers who have been dead for more than 70 years (UK and France) and 50 years (USA) are considered to be ‘in the public domain’ (i.e. can be freely quoted). There are, however, exceptions; and for works still under copyright, the definition of ‘short quotations’ is open to interpretation.

For the past couple of months I’ve been writing to various publishers about permission to quote from copy-righted works. Their replies have ranged from two sentences sent via i-phone citing a hefty fee to responses of a more compassionate  nature. In particular, one publisher has been a shining beacon in the best of the French ‘belles lettres’ tradition, albeit in the form of ‘beaux e-mails’. This is the Editions Gallimard, with whom I have been engaged in the most sympathetic and gracious of correspondence about permission to quote from a letter by Albert Camus.

Albert Camus, sketch by Petr Vorel, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albert_Camus.png

Camus died in a tragic accident 53 years ago this month, aged 46. In 1957, three years before his death, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for ‘his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.’ (His exquisite acceptance speech – humble, generous, immensely moving – can be heard here, with an English translation here.)

On receiving the news of this honour, Camus wrote first to his mother, then to his former primary school teacher, Louis Germain, both of whom were of great significance in his life. Camus was still a baby when his father, an agricultural worker, was killed in the First World War. He was brought up in Algiers, in a poverty-stricken household ruled by his grandmother; his illiterate, partially-deaf mother earned a meagre income as a cleaner. For the young Albert, school was an escape, a sanctuary from the bleakness of his existence at home (in Le Premier Homme, referred to below, he describes poverty as ‘a fortress without a drawbridge’). Throughout his life he remained devoted to the man whose teaching had lifted him out of such a fortress, and to his mother, who believed in the opportunities offered to her son through an education which she had been denied.

Folio Edition of ‘Cher Monsieur Germain,…’ by Albert Camus.

The special bond which existed between Camus and Louis Germain is beautifully illustrated by their correspondence between 1945 and 1959, recently published by Gallimard:Cher Monsieur Germain,…’, (Editions Gallimard, Collection Folio,  May 2022) in which Camus continues to address his former mentor as ‘Cher Monsieur Germain’ and the latter replies ‘Mon cher Petit’. (In a letter of 22 November 1957, Germain recounts how profoundly touched he was to read Camus’s letter, saying ‘To me, you’ll always be ‘mon Petit’, in spite of Mr Nobel’).

The book also contains a chapter from an unfinished autobiographical novel, Le Premier Homme, in which Camus describes his childhood in Algiers, and the experience of going to school. ‘Monsieur Bernard’ (Germain) is the teacher who opens new worlds to his pupils; in the magic of his classroom, the young ‘Jacques’ (Camus) flourishes, eventually passing the scholarship exam enabling him to continue his education at the lycée.

The part where ‘Monsieur Bernard’ goes to see the mother and grandmother of ‘Jacques’ in order to persuade them of the worthiness of allowing the 9-year-old to continue his schooling rather than finding a job, is so beautifully written I defy anyone to read it and remain dry-eyed.  The publisher notes that this special edition, in which, for the first time, the correspondence  appears in its entirety, stands as an homage to the magnificent bond of gratitude and tenderness linking the two men.

The ‘Nobel Letter’ written with Camus’ characteristic humility and gratitude, asserts that he would never have become the man he was without the generous and helping hand that Monsieur Germain held out to him as a poor child.  It has become a touchstone of belief, a credo for teachers and educators. On April 30th 1959, Germain writes about his guiding pedagogical principles, one of which was the conviction that each child should be allowed to find ‘his own truth’– by which I take him to mean a conviction that education is not the same as indoctrination.

Grave of Albert Camus https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:120609_Lourmarin-02.jpg BlueBreezeWiki, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Camus’ words came to the forefront of national attention in October 2020 when France was reeling after the beheading of history teacher Samuel Paty by an Islamic terrorist. Paty was given a national homage at the Sorbonne, symbol of the Enlightenment; one of the texts read out at the ceremony, by request of the family, was ‘Cher Monsieur Germain…’ It was a reminder of the inestimable value of education and freedom of speech and the importance of defending them; on a more personal level, it touched a chord with teachers everywhere, recalling the sense of achievement and special joy that comes when students express their gratitude, especially in the form of a letter.

Prophylactic advice from Grandma

Letters can be kept, and re-read; in my case, those from students have been preciously preserved along with Grandma’s airmails. In some cases they have been joined by further correspondence from the authors, including wedding invitations and announcements of births.

One such series is from a former student in the USA, now a grandmother. In this year’s Christmas greetings and family news roundup, she shared a memory:

‘You know, I remember so fondly the way you brought in fun and current ideas to our French class – it was just right for 13-year-old girls!…It does my heart good to stay in touch.’

It does my heart good too, dear Pam, and those words came at a time when I needed to hear them.

Shortly before Christmas, a cherished friend, with whom I’d worked for more than 20 years, died too soon and too suddenly. His widow and children asked me to speak on behalf of his former colleagues at the funeral service. Struggling to compose a eulogy that would do him justice, I recalled something Camus had said in his acceptance speech in 1957: Les vrais artistes ne méprisent rien, ils s’obligent à comprendre au lieu de juger (True artists scorn nothing, they make it their job to understand rather than to judge.) Our friend, as well as being a teacher, was also an accomplished musician and respected choirmaster. The open-mindedness, intuition and empathy necessary for such a role were qualities which also made him a remarkable communicator in the classroom. Even after he took on the many responsibilities of Head of Department, his office was always open. His generous spirit and lack of pretentiousness were of great comfort for those in search of advice or simply a sympathetic ear, his enduring sense of fun and joie de vivre a tonic for those in need of cheer. He was also a great believer in the importance of education and its power to transform lives.

There’s a common saying, taken from G.B. Shaw: ‘Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach.’

There’s another, this one attributed to Victor Hugo: ‘He who opens a school door closes a prison.’

***

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Michael O’Donoghue, closer of prisons, happy man, husband of Marie-Hélène, father of Emilie and Raphaël, grandfather of Nina and Edwin.  Cher ami, we miss you.

Thanks to Elizabeth, for sending the Times article, and sincères remerciements to Monsieur C.G. at Gallimard.

Book news!!! Congratulations to the wonderful Helena Whitbread, who this month received an Honorary Doctorate from The University of Sheffield. An appreciation of Helena’s work can be found here

Miss Anne Lister and Mrs Helena Whitbread: a marriage of two minds

Copyright Laurette Long 2023

A nice cup of lime-blossom tea

Tea and madeleines. Note the scallop-shell ridges.

Today’s blog gets passionate about Proust.

Marcel Proust By André Szekely de Doba – https://bassenge.com/lots/116/34680, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102904653

The father of the modern novel died one hundred years ago this month, November 18th 1922. I’ve already got passionate about his hawthorn; today it’s time for that iconic madeleine.

‘Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure.’

‘For a long time I used to go to bed early…’ so begins the first volume of A la recherche du Temps Perdu, the stupendous 7-volume work relating the author’s journey of self-discovery through his reflexions on time, memory, art and love.

These early pages describe the young Marcel’s holidays at his grandparents’ country house in Combray as he remembers them. They are dominated by the psychodrama that played out each evening, the narrator’s ‘bedtime torture’.  Dinner was served indoors or, when the weather was fine, in the garden behind the house. But whatever the setting, the young Marcel would be filled with dreadful anticipation of the inevitable moment he would be sent off to bed. While bedtime can be a source of anxiety for many children – ghosts in the dark , monsters under the bed – Marcel’s ‘hours of anguish’ arose from the  hours of separation from his mother, and in particular, the  thought that she might be prevented from coming up to give him his bedtime kiss. (What would his contemporary, Sigmund Freud have made of this?) One of the regular guests who unwittingly thwarted Marcel’s felicity by retaining his mother à table, was their neighbour, Monsieur Swann, later to exert a profound influence on Marcel’s life.

Tante Léonie’s House, Combray -Illiers
Par Fabrice Bluszez — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44191779

The real significance of these childhood holidays, and how they set him on the ‘two paths’ of self-discovery, would only be revealed later, in the famous episode of the madeleine. ‘For many years, Combray had only existed for me insofar as  it concerned  the theatre and drama of my bedtime,’ the author tells us, before  launching into  what is surely  the most well-known passage in the entire 3000 pages. A tired, depressed Marcel arrives home one dreary winter evening. His mother suggests a nice cup of hot tea accompanied by ‘one of those short, plump cakes called ‘petites madeleines’, which look as though they have been moulded in a ridged scallop shell’.

He breaks off a piece of the cake, dips it in the ‘tea’ (an infusion of lime blossoms, ‘tisane de tilleul‘) and raises the spoon to his lips. Immediately, an extraordinary thing happens: it’s as if he’s received an electric shock. A shudder runs throughout his body, followed by an intense, exquisite sensation of expanding pleasure. His existential doubts and anxieties vanish, replaced with a joyful optimism.

Mystified, Marcel struggles to identify the source of such powerful emotions; the answer eludes him, until, at last, he feels something shift and break loose inside him, becoming ‘unanchored.’

It is a memory. In ‘a Proustian rush’ he is once more in Combray, but this time the neurasthenic, sickly child waiting for his mother’s kiss is replaced by the Marcel of Sunday mornings, going to say hello to Great Aunt Léonie. This famous widowed aunt is a malade imaginaire – a hypochondriac confined to bed with a mystery illness and whose ‘inadvertent’ death serves to comfort in their opinion not only those who had always believed her strict confinement would finish her off, but also those who believed she really did have a fatal illness.  During the holidays, Tante Léonie has an unvarying Sunday breakfast ritual:  summoning her great-nephew to her bedside, she dips a madeleine in her tisane and gives it to him to taste.

Unlike memories triggered by visual and auditory stimuli, those associated with our sense of taste and smell linger on when everything else has died. Proust calls them ‘fragile souls’ buried deep within us, waiting to be discovered. In a beautiful image he describes them as ‘remembering…hoping, on the ruin of everything else, bearing unflinchingly on their scarcely perceptible droplet the immense edifice of memory.’

The waterlilies on the
Vivonne…

The chapter finishes on a breath-taking wave of poetic intensity as Marcel experiences the full force of this  ‘involuntary’ memory. His perspective on the ‘old days in Combray’ is transformed; the narrow ‘panel’ of the house and his bedroom expand into a vast panorama. First the entire house appears, ‘ the old grey house on the street’, then ‘the small extension at the back built for my parents, opening on to the garden, then the town, from morning till night, in all weathers, the square where they sent me before lunch, the streets where I ran errands, the paths we  set out to walk when the weather was fine. And, as in the Japanese game where shapeless bits of paper are dropped into a china bowl full of water, then begin to unfurl, spin, infuse with colour and finally become distinct shapes – flowers, houses, solid and recognisable people – so now appeared all the flowers in our garden and the park of Monsieur Swann, the waterlilies on the Vivonne, the good people of the village, their  cottages and the church, and all Combray and its surroundings, the whole, town and gardens, emerged into solid shapes, out of my cup of tea.’ *

What Proust is describing is something that is familiar to us all, but the way he describes it is unforgettable. Those fragile ‘souls’ of taste and smell have the power to resuscitate ‘an old dead memory’, to cause an entire world to unfold and bloom in the mind’s eye with the same magic as those paper flowers in their bowl of water.**

For one brief, glorious moment the ‘lost’ past detaches from ‘the immense edifice of memory’ to join the present:  time stands still.

By Miyuki Meinaka – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17590870

 

Marcel Proust, 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922

 

* Caveat: my own loose translations of the original text.

** I’ve come across different queries about these Japanese flowers on Internet. In the last half of the 19th C  there was a craze for ‘japonisme‘ in France (la folie japonaise). Such flowers seem to be impossible to find nowadays, but as one British poster said, they used to be a Christmas stocking staple in the 1970s.  You can still buy Chinese flowering tea, a similar concept.

©Laurette Long 2022

 

Of Hares and Hedges: Autumn in the Tarn

Autumn in the Tarn

It’s official – the world has gone mad. Real wars with tanks and rockets, political wars, economic wars, vaccine wars, culture wars, and eco wars, in which privileged middle-class dimwits consider hurling mashed potatoes and tins of tomato soup at inanimate works of art to be an act of heroism akin to standing up to Iran’s morality police. ‘I definitely did feel scared,’ said one of the  ‘Just Stop Oil’ pair who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’. Ah, bless. And, as The Times revealed, these heroes are funded by, among others, heiress Aileen Getty, granddaughter of J Paul Getty, once the richest man in the world, and, wait for it, former oil tycoon…

Cathar martyrs and the Crusading Army

As autumn arrives in our hamlet we are glad to be far from the madding crowd and enjoying the douceur of the countryside. Our local heroine is La Dame Guiraude de Lavaur, who in 1211, dared to defy Simon De Montfort’s brutal troops by offering her protection to the persecuted Cathars. For her courageous stance, she was given to the crusading soldiers, raped, thrown down a well and stoned to death.

 

EXTRACT: FROM NETTLES TO NIGHTINGALES:  Hedge Planting and Meadow Makeover

In 2012 our garden was showing some signs of becoming the Mediterranean paradise we’d envisioned in the nightingale-induced Epiphany of our first night at The Cowshed. The next pressing task was to plant hedges. A shift was taking place in the countryside; as small farmers grew too old to work the fields, they would lease or sell. The new owners, with their giant machines, had ripped out some of the old hedgerows, causing mud slides down the hillsides as well as removing natural habitats. Our new ones would not only serve as attractive boundary markers, they would make an important contribution to wildlife propagation and diversity, providing leafy habitats to numerous creatures – the nice ones, of course, birds, rabbits and maybe even hares.

Spring 2012. The garden takes off with baby cypress and wild flowers on north slope

In the spring of 2012 I was strolling down the chemin when I noticed a bizarre scene in the bare field on the left.  Two dogs were standing on their hind legs having a fight. A closer look revealed the dogs had very long ears and white tails…mad March hares having a boxing match!  What a thrill! It was the first time I’d ever seen a hare, let alone a pair of them knocking the stuffing out of each other, their forepaws a blur of movement.  In the years to come, we saw many more, and during the summer of 2020 when a serious drought descended on Occitania, we were treated to another magical experience.

2020, glorious hedges, cradles for baby hares

By then our hedge plants were fairly well-established, but the unprecedented long spell of dry weather was taking its toll, calling for regular watering. Though the sun had gone down, it was still stiflingly hot.  The MDM was on watering duty, gazing up into the purple dusk trying to spot a UFO, not paying much attention to the garden hose in his hand. But as he moved further up the field, he glimpsed something on the grass under the bush he’d just soaked. Looking more closely he made out three baby hares – leverets. They were in their ‘nest’, a shallow indentation aptly named a ‘scrape’, fitted together, head to toe like slippers. They were almost invisible, having obviously paid attention to Maman Lièvre when she told them to flatten their ears and not to twitch a whisker throughout the long hours of her absence. So there they lay, freshly showered, their huge almond-shaped eyes standing out from their drenched fur. I was beckoned over, and we stood for a few moments in entranced silence. Obviously the temptation was to pick them up and take them back to The Cowshed for a cuddle and a saucer of warm milk. But, nature having its own laws, we knew we had to leave them where they were, praying the owl didn’t pay a midnight visit. The next morning all three were gone, which we took as a sign that Maman had decided to do a moonlight flit to a drier home with her three babes rather than contemplating a more bloody scenario.

Spot the dancing leveret shooting off…

Another astonishing encounter with a hare occurred in the spring of 2021. Due to Covid, our quiet hamlet had become even more wild and unfrequented. I was ambling along the chemin as usual, pausing to admire the new foliage and the first traces of green on the fields, when a leveret hopped out, a couple of metres ahead. I immediately adopted a tree impersonation, resisting the temptation to get out the phone and take a picture. The babe hopped almost to my feet, then tilted its head. After staring at me for a few seconds, it suddenly performed a vertical take-off, leaping into the air from all four feet.  

This impressive feat was followed by a virtuoso dance routine. It twirled, pirouetted, threw in more of those amazing standing jumps, turning to look coyly in my direction after each move. Nobody puts Baby Hare in the corner! I was so excited that when it took its final bow and shot off,  I  tried to capture it with the phone camera-too late!-then rushed to the neighbours to describe what had happened. Did hares dance? Had they ever seen anything similar? The answer was no, and the way they were eyeing me I got the impression they were wondering if I’d abandoned my usual croissant and coffee that morning in favour of a demi-saucisson and half a litre of vin blanc…

Others who gave a vote of approval to our hedge scheme were the deer, who, in later years, liked to breakfast on the new shoots of one of our most spectacular dogwoods. They were a rare sight, so we resisted putting up protective netting even though the dogwood ended up lopsided.

Garden makeover. A very big machine.

In charge of the meadow’s new look was our tree whisperer, Munns Le Magnifique. Along with his buddy, Patrick Le Pelletier, he dug out three long trenches marking our boundaries, then levelled off an area at the foot of the slope. This marked the first step of our next project – the Sunset Terrace.

Nightingale concert: pre-performance drinks on the Sunset Terrace

Since the nightingale had returned to our garden in 2012, his favourite opera house was the fig tree at the bottom of the field.  Our idea was to create a sheltered spot where we would be in the front stalls for the performance, as well as ideally placed to watch the spectacle of the sun setting behind the medieval village across the valley. Going for the Full Romantic, we planned a small olive grove next to the terrace, complete with poppies and wild thyme.

 

 

 

Olives and poppies next to the Sunset Terrace

Neither the MDM nor I knew much about the best shrubs for hedges. Many local gardens were surrounded by magnificent thickets of box and yew, but as these had taken 150 years to grow, something faster was required.

We called a meeting with Le Magnifique who, as usual, had his own ideas. Each evening he would email a list of suggestions, and I would look them up on the internet. The result was three splendid mixed hedges, deciduous and evergreen, full of scent and colour. Most of the bushes were unfamiliar to us: silverberries, or oleasters, fragrant-leaved shrubs found near the Mediterranean; osmanthus, another scented evergreen, this one from East Asia; a variety of dogwoods; Cotinus, called the smoke bush in English, (no guesses for what their large flowers look like); Ligustrum, a variety of privet; Spirea, known by the lovely name of meadowsweet in English, covered with pretty sprays of pink and white flowers….the list went on.

Young hedges in 2014, not much showing as yet

They didn’t look like much when they went in. The project was another big financial investment, so we’d opted for ‘slips’, fragile, twiggy things which gave no hint of their future splendour. In total, there were 56 of them, producing beautiful surprises over the years for all four seasons.  Once they grew to maturity, we would stand on our hilltop, looking down at the meadow, listening to the rustle of leaves, imagining the hares sleeping in the moonlight and the deer crossing in the pale dawn, and hope that others, after us, would find the same pleasure in the sight, and perhaps see ghostly traces of our footsteps in the dew. 

Evening reveries from our hilltop

 

BOOK NEWS…..BOOK NEWS….BOOK NEWS

Fans of John Dolan will be thrilled to hear his latest book is out, and it’s a stunner. Land Of Red Mist, a work of historical fiction, completes the cycle of books which make up the 7- volume Time, Blood and Karma and Children of Karma series. Grab it here and here. For thriller fans who haven’t yet discovered this addictive series, start with the first book,  Everyone Burns ” a corker of a detective story…by the time I finished the novel, I was panting for more.” (Robert A. Cohen, Amazon review).

Happy reading!

P.S. In my last blog, July 2022, I was looking forward to building sandcastles in August with my great-nephews. The Fates intervened, and for the last two months I have been strapped up with a fractured humerus, unable to write or build sandcastles…the boys had fun, though! Happy to be back in the blogging saddle once more….carpe diem, and stay upright 😉

©Laurette Long 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adventures in the Writing Tunnel: Working with a Professional Editor

 

Blazing Summer

It’s full blazing summer in the Tarn and devoted followers of this blog (friends, family, the neighbour’s Great Aunt Brigitte and the lady on the cheese counter at SuperU) may have been wondering what’s been happening since February.

That month’s blog included an extract from Chapter 28 of my never-ending Work in Progress From Nettles to Nightingales. Readers may recall the author’s heroic tussles with this Demon Shape Shifter of a memoir. ‘When will it be finished? Who knew it would be so hard?’ I moaned in July 2021. This year’s attempts to tame the beast have included garlic-waving and spear-wielding while singing Running Up that Hill in falsetto (you can learn a lot from Netflix). As spring arrived, social life ground to a halt, the writing tunnel got deeper and I joined a Facebook group (see my thanks in the P.S.) which kept me going when I wanted to lie down and sob.

When will it end!
Artist Gordon Seward

One day (maybe in March, it’s all a blur) I actually typed the magic words ‘The End’, thus breaking a cardinal rule:  Never Ever Tempt the Fates. For, to borrow Winston’s famous words, ‘The End’ was not actually the end, it was not even the beginning of the end…More, and sterner, challenges lay ahead. Read on…

In Chapter 6 of the book, I write about how the installation of a wood-burning stove (poêle) in The Cowshed led me to muse on the story of René Descartes, whose eureka moments occurred in a series of dreams when sleeping in his ‘poêle’ (a small room heated by a stove). The resulting masterpiece was Discourse on the Method, published in 1637 and which established Descartes as the father of modern rationalism.

The stove. No eureka moments

‘Sitting in front of our very own poêle on chilly evenings, the MDM (Maître De Maison) and I had often found ourselves dozing off. So far neither of us has had a eureka moment and become a famous philosopher. (We’d settle for a dream about the winning lottery numbers). But I’ve occasionally mused on the idea that the Cartesian mindset, ‘cogito ergo sum’, the notion of eliminating all possible doubt by a process of reasoning before accepting the truth of something, has shot down in a straight line through history to lodge itself in the head of the MDM.

In contrast, winding and looping down into my head over the years and making a cosy nest there are the observations of another great Frenchman, an accidental philosopher writing about life the way he sees it in a series of rambling, digressive ‘loose sallies of the mind’ (to borrow a definition from Dr Johnson).

I was referring to the mighty Michel De Montaigne, whose Essays, published in 1580, have frequently been mentioned on this blog, and about whom Nietzsche observed ‘The pleasure of living on earth has been increased by the fact that such a man wrote.’

The writing tunnel

The point of the above, as it relates to my tussles with the Shape-Shifter, is this: perhaps one reason I’m drawn to Montaigne’s work as opposed to that of Descartes is because I am not a rational, organised writer (or indeed person) who goes about things in a linear fashion with a lot of cogitos and ergos. Consequently, when I came up with a plan for a non-fiction book three years ago– a short, easy-to-write, easy-to-read memoir about how the Maître De Maison and I moved to rural France and created a garden from a wilderness – I felt extremely pleased with myself. I even went as far as to write a chapter outline based on diary entries, photographs and emails to friends. Eureka!  I was going linear!

The problem was, my subconscious had another plan, a non-linear ramble more like a drunken weave  that wandered off down all sorts of paths, historical, geographical, cultural, linguistic, literary – in short, a Rebel that blew raspberries at my neat timeline, tempted me with honeyed words and siren-songs, and when I resisted, bellowed the chorus from the Monty Python ‘Philosopher’s Song’, the bit that goes ‘René Descartes was a drunken fart/I drink therefore I am.’

The study, a tranquil haven

Writing, at the best of times, is a solitary and demanding business. Authors must cope with obstacles and obligations – a day job, a family to bring up, the lack of quiet place to write, and so forth. In my case, I had neither day job nor children; I had a tranquil study with stunning views; at the end of the writing day I had the MDM flipping the burgers, mixing the margaritas and generally shoring me up.

Margarita maison

But I faced other obstacles – writing in English while immersed in a French-speaking environment, and living in a small rural community where anglophone bookworms willing to discuss chapter development over coffee and hobnobs were thin on the ground.  Adding to these difficulties was the Rebel Raspberry-Blower, whose subversive agenda had introduced an unexpectedly personal dimension into the story: the account of my mother’s final years, her declining health, and death. From writing about the excitement of new beginnings I found myself compelled to write also about the sadness of endings; about joy, and about sorrow.

The stark realisation came mid-March: I had two choices: chuck the manuscript on the compost heap or get professional help.

Enter the developmental editor.

Editorial services for writers fall into distinct groups, line editing, copy editing and developmental editing. Briefly, for those unfamiliar with the terms, the line editor checks things like syntax, word choice and clarity in sentences. The copy editor will focus on spelling, grammar, punctuation, stylistic inconsistencies and formatting. The developmental editor is the Head Surgeon, looking at the big picture, head, shoulders, knees and toes, then delivering a detailed, in-depth critique on things like content, structure, quality, plot and character development, and market potential.

When I wrote my EFL book, I was working with one of the big publishers, Oxford University Press, and thus had a de facto editor. She turned out to be a godsend, transforming the manuscript and becoming a dear friend. I learned that the collaborative process with the right kind of editor is truly invaluable. The question now was: where could I find another Yvonne?

I turned to the Reedsy website.

Set up in 2014, Reedsy is an on-line market place where you can hire freelance professionals, describing itself as ‘changing the way books are published by giving authors and publishers access to talented professionals, powerful tools, and free educational content.’

Beautiful books

Browsing the numerous profiles, I submitted my proposal to a short list of five, finally choosing one whose professional background and enthusiasm for the project had the added benefit of a somewhat unusal work method. Instead of offering a detailed written critique followed by phone or video discussions, she proposed a form of mentoring lasting between four to six weeks. I would send one chapter at a time, she would edit and critique it, and I would write a revised version. At the end of the process she would read the revised manuscript in one ‘swoop’ and give a verdict.

When ‘The End’ is not the end, and you need an Editor

There was a lot of word-shedding. We started with 106 000 words (which I had already whittled down from 108 000), and finished with 99 000. Parts where the pace flagged and I wandered off-piste were noted, and re-written. Structurally, chapters were moved about, merged together, renamed. The entire work became tighter, better-written and more focused, and a harmonious, somewhat arboreal 😉 shape grew around the central garden theme. The six weeks became two months. Seeing the book through a second pair of eyes made me stop and think; it was rare that I disagreed with her suggestions, expressed in a kind and encouraging manner, praising the bits she liked while being clear about what needed changing, and why, often with practical suggestions.

What an experience!  Challenging, intensive, enriching, inspirational, and totally exhausting – I loved it. This, I thought, was what every writer needs – a patient, meticulous, empathetic and innovative editor who knows how to handle not just the manuscript, but the author, whose moods can range from black despair to full-on defensive prickliness.

So three rousing cheers for Tatiana Wilde,  whose role in getting me to The Real End (Fin) will be fully acknowledged when the manuscript makes the next step, into print/ebook.

But that’s another story, another challenge, another day. Meanwhile, I shall be down at the Big Blue acquiring new skills as an apprentice sand-castle builder with my three great-nephews. Life is one long, learning process…

Bring on the sandcastles

Bonnes vacances to all readers!

PS I’ve previously mentioned those amazing friends who stepped up as literary midwives when I was writing the French Summer Novels. During this last year, when momentum flagged, I’ve had support via a Facebook group called ‘500 words a day’. Thanks to all, in particular the ever-encouraging mods, E.M. Swift-Hook and Ian Bristow, and member Fabrice Rigaux who read and gave feedback on a difficult chapter about Paris.

Flower Crime: a True Confession

uncancellable narcissi

In today’s Woke World where anything can be cancelled from Chaucer to cervixes, it’s good to remember the affirmation of the world’s greatest living painter :

Spring Cannot be Cancelled 

Having said that…

Extract from Chapter 28 From Nettles to Nightingales

As any gardener will tell you, autumn is bulb-planting time. I will go further and argue that those possessing the merest smidgeon of British DNA are driven to plant bulbs each autumn in the same way swallows wave ‘Bye Bye’ and head back to Africa. UK supermarkets are full of special offers, gaudily-illustrated catalogues from Holland drop through British letterboxes like bonbons, and Britannia-en-masse gets out trowels and kneeling mats. Why? Because for us northerners, bulbs are the eagerly-awaited signs of spring, bright harbingers after dark winter days.

Where’s spring?

I remember the whole Yorkshire family longing for spring. As early as February we would go outside and sniff the air, hoping for that faint delicious draught that heralds winter’s close. The change from light to dark, from death to rebirth, could be summed up by the biannual pronouncements of my maternal Grandmother. In autumn she would glumly observe ‘th’ neets are drawin’ in’ (trans: the nights are drawing in) while spring merited the cheerful pronouncement ‘th’ neets are drawin’ out.’ In neighbouring houses every scrap of garden, no matter how humble, would celebrate the event with a joyful show of snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils, narcissi, tulips and primroses.

Daffodils and narcissi The Backs, Cambridge

In Cambridge, where I later lived, one of the most iconic sights was ‘the backs’ of the colleges, in particular King’s. Every March, these placid green swathes of sheep-and-cow-dotted meadowland sloping gently to the River Cam and extending beyond as far as the road with copses of tall trees, would be invaded by camera-clicking tourists, angling for the perfect shot: in the foreground, the explosions of thousands of crocuses, daffodils and narcissi, in the middle, the river, bridges and willows,  and topping it all off like a spun sugar wedding cake ornament in the background,  the magnificent cathedral of King’s College.

King’s College, seen from the River Cam.
Photo Mike McBey courtesy Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambridge_(49343363248).jpg

In Toulouse, we’d always had spring pots of tulips on the terrace. At The Cowshed it was a different story. Some of our most spectacular garden failures had been bulbs. In 2013 we eagerly awaited the results of the ‘Buckingham Palace Tulips’ project. Envisioned as an arresting double row of proud, letter-box red blooms lining the north wall like guardsmen and causing farmers passing by on tractors to shout ‘boudiou!’ and doff their caps, the reality was a handful of thin-stemmed droopers falling nose first into the grass. Ditto for the drifts of crocuses (a grand total of 9 huddled in misery down the side of the slope) and snowdrops (what snowdrops?)

So, with my genetic heritage, why was the bulb initiative a total flop? Was it the climate? The terrain? Or could it be the past catching up with the Head Gardener, making her pay for former sins…was it, in short, Tulip Karma?

Was it tulip karma??

The awful truth was that, as a child, I had committed a flower crime. The shameful story was handed down from generation to generation, and the experience remains imprinted on my mind in lurid technicolour. The drama occurred at my grandparents’ house. My paternal grandparents, as recounted in an earlier chapter, lived in a one-up, one-down rented terrace property with their six children. My maternal grandparents on the other hand, by dint of scrimping, saving and only having one child, had risen in the world, finally able to buy a small terraced house with the luxury of an indoor bathroom.  Along with the other families who had bought in the same street, this was the equivalent of reaching domestic Nirvana. Thirty-odd identical houses ran up the left-hand side of the street, another thirty-odd ran down the opposite side. At the back of each house were long, narrow gardens separated by low rustic fences, and which were on a par, Nirvana-wise, with the indoor bathrooms.  In Grandad’s well-tended plots, not a weed dared to poke its head through the abundant clusters of flowers characteristic of the English garden – marguerites, hollyhocks, lupins, poppies – ending in a rustic arch covered in roses. The rectangle of lawn in the middle was cricket-pitch smooth and weedless. This garden was my kingdom: I was its miniature tyrannical ruler with two slaves. My mother being an only child, logic decreed that, as first grandchild, I should be hopelessly spoiled, cossetted and indulged, an angel who could do no wrong. At the bottom of the garden, next to the shed, Grandad had erected a swing; one of his jobs was to push the young angel up and down until his arms dropped off.

When Grandad wasn’t on duty, it was Grandma’s turn, telling stories as she sat in her chair on the lawn. In my earliest memories she is wearing dark glasses and a green eyeshade, like the ones worn by 19th C telegraphers. Born into a large family, she had contracted a lethal combination of chicken pox and diphtheria which left her with scarring on both retinas. Although kept off school for long periods, she was a smart, intelligent child who loved to read whenever her damaged eyesight permitted. By the time I came onto the scene, she was undergoing treatment with a specialist involving the application of drops and creams to burn off the scars. The results were variable; at times she was able to see well enough to read and write; on other, terrifying, days, she would wake up to find her world had dimmed to vague shapes and faded colours. It was only as I grew older that I understood what an indomitable spirit she had, living not only with this physical handicap but also the fear that one day a final darkness would descend and the colours would never return.

One of her favourite expressions, much-used to express her amazement and gratitude at having risen to the heights of a two-up-two-down residence with indoor toilet and garden, was ‘Ee! We live like fighting cocks!’ I had no idea what a fighting cock was, but dimly grasped that these farmyard creatures were living the high life, like their cousins, the pigs in clover.  It was only later I found out the terrible truth–they were being fattened up and cossetted in order to take part in gladiatorial combats similar to those in the bloody arenas of ancient Rome! Much later I learnt that their French cousins didn’t fare any better, being fattened up with the express intention of ending their days in a pie, the French equivalent of Grandma’s exclamation being ‘nous vivons comme des coqs en pâte.’

Poppies in the fairy kingdom

Grandma was a wonderful story teller. All the old favourites – Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Bears, were recounted in dramatic detail, with different voices. She also invented tales of her own, inspired by her new garden where she would sit in a chair, narrating wondrous events like a Celtic bard, while I sat on the grass, spellbound.  As she nudged my imagination into realms of beauty and magic, flower kingdoms with fairies, princes and princesses, witches and wizards, all of these imaginary journeys became linked to that unique, grounded feeling of love and security imparted to children by the presence of a beloved human story-teller. Listening to Grandma’s voice, I could look around at the enclosed world of marguerites and Michaelmas daisies, all taller than me, and feel safe and happy.

So, Reader, what then possessed the little angel, that fateful day in the spring of her fourth year, to embark on a campaign of carnage and destruction?

A better question would be ‘who’? Also visiting his grandparents that day was a certain Brian, a year older than me and obviously destined to become a future  leader of a satanic cult. As the grownups were busy preparing Sunday lunch, the devil-child Brian lured me away from the fairy kingdom and led me up and down the backs of every house in the street where we gleefully nipped off the tops of every blooming tulip in every spring garden. A red and yellow trail of disaster lay in our wake.

Naturally, the crime was discovered. The entire street came out to witness our walk of shame, marched along by outraged grandparents (the first time I had ever experienced their wrath) to apologise to every scandalised householder and injured gardener. As I sobbed out a litany of ‘sorry-I-promise-never-to do-it again’, the spawn of Satan trailed behind, bottom lip thrust out. His parting shot, accompanied by a look of false righteousness and a pointing finger was:

‘She told me to do it!’

Thus concluded my first life lessons about the wickedness of destroying beautiful things and the inconstancy of the male species.

‘Frailty, thy name is woman!’

Joyeux printemps to all, hoping for brighter days ahead!

(Since writing this, Storm Eunice has battered the UK, 1 million people without power and gusts of 122 mph wind have been recorded 🙁 so extra-special thoughts go to those across the Channel.)

Looking for something to read? There’s a treat in store with Sheila Patel’s latest book in  her Aunt Sheila’s Pandemic Diaries Series The Vaccine Strikes Back : ”the writing sparkles…” “genuinely funny but also touching in places…” “Brilliantly written account of the madness of the pandemic.” What are you waiting for?

Meanwhile, not far from the Singh’s corner shop in Bradford is Haworth, home of the Brontës and the setting for The Passage of Desire, which is FREE to download February 19, 20 and 21. Enjoy!

 #LoveBooks! #LoveYorkshire!

©Laurette Long 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

Changing seasons, changing vistas

 

Opening the shutters

Today’s blog gets passionate about France’s ‘Little Tuscany’, our home for the past ten years. As 2021 draws to a close and a global pandemic continues to bring misery, we are lucky to live in a place where we only have to step outside to realise the world is still full of wonders. Here’s how it hit us that first autumn.

FROM NETTLES TO NIGHTINGALES: CHAPTER13 CHANGING SEASONS CHANGING VISTAS

“Autumn 2011. As former city-dwellers we took a while to adjust to the experience of living up close and personal with Big Nature. The geographic situation of the house meant that we were constantly coming face to face with arresting spectacles.  Sitting at the edge of our plateau was like being in a planetarium, or a 3D IMAX cinema.

Rolling vistas

The vast expanses of earth and sky all around furnished a constantly-changing panorama – at eye-level, the gentle swells of the hills and valleys with their changing colours was cut through by sharp lines of trees and wedges of forests, the branches stark in winter and burgeoning with leaves in summer.

The sky above our heads would one day be a blinding cerulean blue pieced by a burning sun; the next, full of frantic commotion, rolling banks of clouds with black thunderheads, apocalyptic sunsets and fingers of God. In summer evenings a dusty golden light fell over the landscape, gilding grass and leaves.

Apocalyptic sunsets

Every time you stepped outdoors you noticed something had changed; the way the branches bent against the wind or the cloud shadows chased across the meadows, the way the sun’s rays lit up the new candles on the umbrella pine.

Growing up on the edge of Bronte country, I was familiar with the wide, open vistas where immense stretches of moorland reached to the horizon under the inverted bowl of the sky. But the vistas of Little Tuscany were different, full of complex geometry, Cezanne-like in the juxtaposition of their shapes. Nothing was flat; the landscape rolled or climbed or dipped or curved.

Rolled dipped or curved

To reach the horizon your eye had to travel across irregular fields clinging to slanting hillsides and bounded by untrimmed hedges running up and down vertically or at extreme angles. Beyond were valleys, dark patches of woodland and clusters of habitations perched on hilltops.

As summer drew to an end that first year, we discovered autumn’s ambivalent moods. There were days full of glorious Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness, the smell of  log fires, the crackle of fallen leaves underfoot and the promise of Dickensian Christmases to come. Others, damp and chilly, struck a more downbeat note, reminding us of the ‘sere, the yellow leaf’ into which our lives fall after their spring and summer.

les sanglots longs des violons

For Paul Verlaine, poet par excellence  of mists and half-tones, the season’s melancholy and sad landscapes were like a wound – the ‘long sobbing notes’ of autumn’s violins striking a monotonous languor into his heart in one of his most famous poems:

Les sanglots longs/ Des violons de l’automne/ Blessent mon cœur/ D’une langeur monotone.

One day that first September I opened the bedroom shutters and saw nothing except for the ghostly silhouette of brambles at the top of the slope.  The panorama had vanished, the universe had shrunk. As the sun rose, the blanket of mist became translucent, each drop of moisture hanging in a shimmering web.

A village half-way up the sky

Little by little, a village began to emerge half-way up the sky, a church spire, blurred rooftops. Then the entire hilltop village became visible, floating like an Arthurian mirage in the middle of a lake. Colour was added, streaks of cobalt, and, from the east shafts of sunlight broke through to make the rooftop tiles glint, then turn into sheets of gold.This shifting spectacle continued for most of the morning.

The mist would sometimes lift completely, only to drop again with the suddenness of a stage curtain. At other times the different layers dissolved and re-formed in a sensuous ballet, revealing tantalising patches of countryside, coy folds and hollows, the corner of a field, before swirling veils would hide the scene once more. It was the first time I realised that ‘grey’ could be such an interesting and nuanced colour (fifty shades?) ranging from impenetrable sub-marine murkiness to a scintillating quivering silver, hinting at magical revelations- a witch, a wizard, a fairy, a goddess.

Later I saw a TV programme about a photographer called Simon Powell who roams the Welsh countryside trying to capture  the phenomenon known to the locals as ‘dragon’s breath’, huge swirling clouds of vapour that sometimes hit the mountains and valleys of that country in the evenings and early mornings. Our ‘Little Tuscany’, a region of softer, more gentle undulations, offers a spectacle that is meridional rather than Celtic, magical and ethereal as opposed to dramatic and menacing.

Arthurian mirage with Tuscan perspectives

“For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life – the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value,’ wrote Claude Monet.

Morning moon over valley

Thinking of Monet’s numerous paintings of Rouen cathedral and northern haystacks, Turner’s eddying vapours of sea frets and industrial smoke, I envied the artists who were able to capture so compellingly such ever-changing, fleeting moments.  For beings such as myself, possessing zero artistic talent, the camera is both a godsend and a curse. The faithful Canon has been called to do duty countless times in an attempt to capture just a hint of nature’s season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Sometimes this involved studied zooms and panoramas from the bedroom window, other times, eye-ball-to-eyeball confrontations with the elements, standing in the chemin clad in pyjamas and slippers,  waving the smartphone in all directions.

Similar to our first misty morning experience was the day in February 2012 when I again pushed back the shutters, this time onto a world in black and white. It had snowed overnight; all around lay silent white fields broken by leafless hedges and the dark density of the oak wood. The chemin disappeared, the temperature dropped to minus 14 at night, our hamlet was cut off, and we were glad we hadn’t planted an olive tree in the field the previous October.

(Extract from my Work (Still!) In Progress:  From Nettles to Nightingales).

For sumptuous visual treats this Christmas, take a look at the website of artist Gordon Seward, who has recently won two prestigious Prizes: the Prix Raphaël-Sennelier 2021 awarded by the Fondation Taylor-Paris, and the Prix Renée Asp 2021 awarded by the Académie du Languedoc Toulouse . Three cheers for Gordon and his Muse, Cécile!

And, as 2021 draws to a close, I once again hand over to Kurt Vonnegut:

“I am eternally grateful… for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.” (Timequake)

Happy Christmas to one and all, hoping you can raise a glass with loved ones to toast ‘the honour of being alive.’

Joyeux Noël!

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Albert Poyet,  much loved husband of Françoise, who left us in September. A loyal and supportive friend for forty years, a scholar, a gentleman and an enthusiast who lived life to the full. 

©Laurette Long 2021