Rhododactylos eos

Creeping out of the hotel on Saturday morning, after having checked out via an impressive eastern European receptionist, I rounded the corner onto North Bridge. I turned up the collar of my raincoat, expecting icy raindrops down my neck, as the pavements were slimy with that peculiarly Edinburgh mix of overnight drizzle, well-trodden chewing-gum and the involuntary, probably projectile expulsion of Friday night alcoholic excess.

But a reward was waiting for me the moment I left the shadow of the old Post Office: the sky, all of it from spectacular horizon to spectacular horizon (and is there any cityscape to beat that bridge view?), was lit up in a pink hued feast of underlit cirrus cloud. Homer called the show "rosy fingered dawn". The effect was breathtaking, but only lasted a minute. For a rendering into words, albeit at the day's end, try the last volume of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, where, in the land of tramps, the equivalent of music or theatre critics, sitting in raggle-taggle dignity on a west-facing hillside, comment aloud, for the benefit of the equally tattered crowd of afficionados, on the infinite subtleties of sunsets.

Grand Hotel

My accommodation for my brief return to Edinburgh is very grand indeed. The Balmoral is part of the 'Rocco Forte Collection'. The name Forte rang a distant bell: the last time I had any dealings with Forte hotels was when I worked for Rocco's father as a dishwasher before going up to university.

The service in the hotel is creepily obsequious, some of it replete with Glengarries, kilts and capes: this level of servitude is probably what most people pay for, I suppose, but it does not have the desired effect on me. On arrival, a flunkey spent quite a few minutes apologising that the general manager was not immediately available to shake my hand. He was still wringing his hands and lamenting when I got into the lift. Surprised it wasn't hand cranked for my personal satisfaction.

When I got back to the hotel after dinner with Davide Messina, there was a message on the answerphone from, guess who, the general manager, apologising for not having been there to shake my hand.

Later on, when just getting relaxed, there was an insistent knocking on the door. Another flunkey was desperate to turn down the coverlet on the bed. I fobbed him off by deigning to accept his personalised printout of the weather forecast for the next morning.

Once in the room it took me a while to guess where the noise of an Airbus taking off was coming from: when I had inserted the electronic keycard into the slot, all the systems came on, along with every conceivable light, the monumental telly etc.. Turns out the airconditioning unit, which was on full-blast, could probably run to cooling a supermarket in the tropics. That level of capacity could be really useful in Edinburgh, particularly in January. Maybe foreign guests are comforted by the noise, which they take as a familiar sign of a well run hotel. Finding the off switch took some time, but the relief when the noise stopped was a bliss worth waiting for.

Carte vitale

After a reminder from the better half, thought I had better confront the bureaucracy of the French health system, so having gathered together my E106 which had been sent to me by Newcastle (very efficient and pleasant they were, too), plus the usual bits and bobs the French seem always to require, I marched down to the local office of the Caisse Primaire d'Assurance Maladie. It was a nondescript, concrete neo-brutalist building in a new, but not that new, bit of Antibes. I could tell I'd got to the right place by the resigned-looking queue cramming every nook and cranny. At least they hid the floor, which was paved with some of the grimmest public building tiling I've seen since the main post office in Rouen. They weren't that proud of it, though, because somebody had painted (some time ago, by the look of it) a tatty yellow 'no-one beyond here' line right across it - at an angle so subtly not quite parallel with the tiling itself that it was a real work of art.

So, it was my turn to queue, along with the various problem cases (mostly people trying to certify sick notes). Trouble was, in order to queue, I needed a ticket - for the sequence. In order to get a ticket, I needed to put my carte vitale (NHS card) into the ticket machine. It was precisely this carte vitale I had come to obtain. I used the principle of élan and jumped the queue to ask what to do. Nasty stares from the people who had clearly spent a week camping whilst awaiting their turn. The lady at the desk, after trying out the "You can't possibly not have a carte vitale" routine, then told me to undo the lid of the ticket machine and try the secret override button. It had been so much used it was practically worn away. So much for cardless folk being an impossibility!

That was me queueing, at last. Eventually, my turn came up. I marched up to the desk, pulled out my documentation and started my spiel. Hardly a sentence in to my oration, I was cut short. "Can't be done at this desk: go back and wait to be called to another desk".

Turn comes up again; new lady insists that I must already be registered on their system, and gets really cross when quite visibly I am not. Try to explain that I have come to get myself registered on their system. This line of reconciliation was not a good idea. Rather than just say that their local office was not able to do the transaction, which is a bog-standard one, they said that it was impossible to work out my situation regarding entitlements without a "prolonged and detailed study of the case", which could only take place in Nice. Afterwards, armed with the official results of this "research", they would look at the dossier. I decided against telling them that the form, a European one, detailed precisely the status of my entitlements, and that the research had kindly been done for them by the DHSS in Newcastle.

It was an interesting, if predictable, voyage into the mentality of la fonction publique, but it lost me quite a few hours of painting and decorating time. To cap it all, arrived back at the flat to find that the water had been turned off: not great for sluicing off the dirt of a day's work.

Fishy business, flagging...

After the mammoth cleaning session, we went for a walk in the Port Vauban. This private port contains a great flotilla of the most diversely flagged yachts I've ever seen. What links Douglas, Bridgetown, St Helier, St Peters Port, etc.? They're all flags of convenience.

There seems to be a simple rule about navigation equipment. If the boat never puts to sea, and it is clear that lots don't, then it needs at least two radars and three satellite position domes. The working fishing boats here, which go out in all weathers, and fish far out at night, make do with a torch.

There were lots of fish in the harbour, grey mullet by the look of them. Normally they are attracted by things like sewage outflows. Must be the boats...

Decrudding

Today was a day for cleaning, scraping, sanding and generally de-gunging. We've finished the bedroom with the mezzanine, have removed all the do-it-yourself paraphernalia, hoovered and mopped, and promptly shut the door tight. Not before a photo, though, of the inspectrice on her rounds. Think she found the result more or less up to scratch.

Edible arithmetic

The climate here suits weird vegetables. They thrive on the moist warm air, and then we thrive on them...

This one, a romanesco, caught my eye in the marché provençal. Just had to buy it! Didn't reckon on the price, however, which makes it more expensive than steak. But no steak looks this good, and not much meat gives you a practical lesson in Fibonacci sequences.

Doorframes and stinkbombs

Today was the day when the blacksmith came to measure up for the railing. Turns out my hunch was correct: all the men round here called "Sauveur", and there are lots of them, are really "Salvatore". This one, when he found out that I had taught Italian, broke into Sicilian, and revealed that his parents were from Caltanisetta (Sicily), and that he had been born in Tunisia. There used to be lots of Italians in North Africa.

Everything went fine: measurements OK, finalised details of decorative work and handrail end curve (the equivalent of the newel post), discussion of how to get rid of old Greek restaurant ruins, etc., then, as he was leaving, he looked at our door, took out his measuring tape, and said that the assembled ironwork wouldn't get through the space. Most likely it will have to be hauled up from the street, via the balcony. All 120 kilogrammes or so. Promise to keep you posted...

Work today consisted of applying and sanding the dreaded "lissage". Horrible stuff, which has to be put on in very thin coats, left to dry, then sanded, then done again and again. Funny thing, though: when being sanded, it smells of stink-bombs. Why would a quick drying plaster mix have hydrogen sulphide in it? Discolours the steel of the palette knife, too, if left for a while. Must ask Meirion!

Real vandalic usage: not the spray kind

That balustrade, kindly described as Brussels neo-Greek restaurant style, is no more: or rather it is a row of stumps. I was looking to see how it was anchored to the floor, worried that it might have been bolted in, and gave it a fairly hefty shuggle. The bloody thing came off in my hand - all 100kg of it. Just managed to prevent it from hitting the floor as it toppled. Tomorrow will see me try to cut the plaster into carryable bits.

The room looks a lot better, even if it is rubble strewn. A photo will be taken tomorrow, when there is enough light to do the ruins justice.

Flakiness

Paint is supposed to stick to what it is painted on, and it usually does. Mostly. But in our new flat, there are patches where the newly applied paint dries and flakes to a perfect eczema finish: annoying, especially when just planning to apply the second coat and move on to another task. The solution I've found, not one on the internet, is to scrape off the diseased patch, spray with 'vandalic' paint, fill with polyfilla, spray again, then hope that the new emulsion sticks. So far it has.

Another mini-drama was when I unscrewed the rose of the 'lustre', a strange, almost sculptural tin light fitting, so as to be able to paint right up to the rim. Since wiring here is pretty solid, single core copper, quite hard to cut with pliers, I thought it was safe enough to leave dangling whilst the paint dried. Some twenty minutes drying later, the better half had just walked under the light fitting when, !CRASH!, down it came. Luckily the electricity was not on, otherwise there would have been a !FLASH! as well, and a whole blown fuse box.

Railing against the day

We bought the flat because the location and the internal layout were 'sympa'. The exterior will need quite a lot of TLC, in the form of a 'ravalement', but that will no doubt be the subject of quite a few posts in the future.

On the inside, one detail we really want to change is the banister for the stairwell leading down from the living room to the front door. The previous owner installed a length of balustrade with bulbous columns and a massive handrail, all made out of plaster. This is clearly ready made garden ornament from the equivalent of B&Q, and is completely out of scale and character.

We are tempted to replace it with wrought iron railings, so yesterday we headed for Vallauris, to talk with a blacksmith. His forge reminded me of the stuff in Morgny, except for the absence of rust. The blacksmith took us round examples of sections used in making railings, and drew diagrams in chalk on a piece of sheet steel. Fascinating linguistically as well as culturally.

Vallauris is an interesting town, still suffering from the after effects of Picasso's collaboration with the pottery industry. Some of the horrors on sale are truly exceptional, even after seeing the so-called 'artisan' works of the twee tourist villages around here. Vallauris really understands the impact of colour glazes, and does not use them sparingly.

The other feature of the town is the high proportion of north Africans living there. Berber and Arab were the only languages we heard on the street, and the shops were like something from the souk. Lots of unemployed men loitering, but no sign of the women folk. Generally good vibes about the town, though, unlike Grasse, which feels threatening.

Cancelled

My driving lessons turn out to have been a mite premature! Whilst registering with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which required all kinds of details in return for a distinctly muted offer of help, I happened to glance at my driving licence.

This had been returned to me when I had tried to get a new style photo licence from the DVLA, but with my French address. The returned original was accompanied by a letter stating that they couldn't issue licences to foreign addresses, but that my old licence would be valid abroad, whatever the address.

Seemed OK, and I started to drive. But now that I've looked closely at the whole licence (remember the old style ones are folded), I've discovered a great big black stamp proclaiming that the document is cancelled.

Up shit creek, really, because I cannot apply for a UK licence, being abroad, and I can't get an exchange French one because the bloody thing says 'cancelled' on it.

I rang the DVLA, who put me on hold when they realised they'd cocked up. They tried to say the licence was valid; not to worry; etc., but I told them I wasn't looking forward to explaining to the CRS traffic police that a cancelled licence was OK, because Swansea said so.

They are now going to send me a certificate of entitlement. Don't know if that is going to impress the natives...

Brown Stains

No, not that kind, even though a lot of legal shit has been hitting the fans around here. The appartment we are renting is a very nice concrete building, about thirty years old, with strange rounded balconies, a bit like theatre boxes.

The lady at the very top of the building, from some hazily northern country and rarely in residence, has, for the last 25 years been patiently and completely illegally colonising the vast roof space beyond her official terrace, turning it into a lush garden complete with swimming pool, lawns, and a bosky dell replete with ancient olive trees. A little paradise.

The trouble is the roof was not designed to carry such a load, and the most fantastic leaks have happened. The flat above ours is now officially uninhabitable, and water has also made its way down patiently into our kitchen, immediately below, thus the brown stains.

The building being a 'copropriété' (condominium), this has meant complex bureaucratic and legal manoeuvres to agree that gnarled forests and their respective root systems, coupled with water retention due to blocked run-offs, are the cause of the inundations. Once that has happened, possibly six months of further leaks away, the real disagreement about who is to pay will get going.

The process came to a head yesterday afternoon, when the whole troop of owners (not a pretty sight watching the propertied classes protecting their interests) ended up, with respective lawyers, engineers, condensation experts etc., marching into our flat to look at the brown stains. One of the owners was represented by his father, who was nearly 7 foot tall. He was officially nominated to look at the stains from close to, which, considering they were on the ceiling, was quite a good idea. Before the multitude, yours truly had to make a statement 'sur l'honneur' about the stains, making it clear whether water had dripped, dribbled, sweated or oozed through the plaster. All these absentee landlords were taking notes and consulting their lawyers.

Zéro de conduite

My better half has been forcing me to drive the car. The intention is good, because I'm going to need to use the beast once in a while. In practice, I need a change of underwear after each test drive, as not only am I still getting used to a very unfamiliar car, after a semester without driving, but I am also having to adapt to Cote d'Azur motor culture, and particularly 'moto' culture. The two wheelers take their lives into their hands, or rather place their lives in your hands (and right foot reflex for the brakes).

Still, I am beginning to get the hang of it, slowly, even though it sounds like Antibes has just won a football match, the way all the horns are blaring at me from behind.

Plumber's friend

One of the joys of doing up a 'pre-loved' house is finding all the things which weren't quite loved enough. The window mechanisms were one; the light switch was another, but today's unmissable was the blocked sink. I should have guessed from the smell of sheep carrion which was coming from the plug hole, but it took today's use of water to wash the accumulated grease from the kitchen tiles and units to realise that the drains were full of something, and that something was not fluid and was definitely not water.

First attempts with bleach and hot water (rustled up on the ancient microwave) proved fruitless, so we went in search of a plumber's friend. It being Sunday, there was not much likelihood of finding one. But we were in luck.

On the Place Nationale there is a penny bazaar selling the most amazing examples of sentimental ornaments (think 'oil painting' of gypsy lass, galloping semi-naked and bareback across moonlit shore), inherently unstable ironing boards and cheap crockery, not to mention some pretty loud bedspreads. In the basement (interesting for the vaulting: this is a really old house), there was a variety of mean looking plumber's friends with hefty handles. Maybe the old town needs a muscular enema to its drains once in a while. I was very glad of the plastic bag which covered the large, and bright red rubber sucker when I went to have a coffee at the terrace of the Vieil Antibes café. Even with the plastic bag concealing my trophy, I was pretty sure the other people were staring at me and wishing they had chosen another table... Either that, or they had a bad case of 'plunger envy'... Maybe size matters after all...

Got the outsized 'friend' home, filled the sink (I forgot to say that I had earlier decrudded the plug filters, which produced between them some fine examples of pond life, some of which dated back to the Jurassic at least), asked the better half to hold down the other plug with firm resolve, and started the recommended piston action using both hands. Strange noises, some which sounded like distant street protests, followed by what would be, in a person, gastric reflux.

The sink filled with slime and then started to empty. I was waiting to see whether there would be a whirlpool, which would indicate an end to the problem. Charybdis! Another problem 'down the drain'.

Sunshine again

The thermometer may be reading close to zero, and the sea is covered with whitecaps, but the sun is once more in evidence. It makes a huge difference psychologically, even if I am spending the time indoors, marking left-over essays from Edinburgh.

The sun brings out just how near the snow line is to Antibes, and produces two magic moments a day, at dawn and dusk, when the mountains glow in a most unlikely colour of dayglow pink. Quite sublime...

Three quarters through reading The Boneyard by Paul Johnston, set in the same dystopian republic of Edinburgh as his Body Politic. Nice to read of the chill (physical and moral) when seated 2000km away. Almost makes me feel nostalgic, and half tempts me to try my hand at a thriller myself. Given that there is an ancient Remington portable in the new flat, and that there is a roof terrace, some of the prerequisites are there. All I need is the gin and the talent (do they depend on each other, and if so, which is the prerequisite of the other?). Johnston started writing about Edinburgh whilst living in Greece, so there is a precedent.

Travaux

Set off in the rain, again, for the flat. I took with me a small electrician's screwdriver, as the light switch in the ex blue bedroom came off in my hand, leaving 220 volts' worth of tingling current at the end of exposed wires. I isolated the circuit, figured out how to take the switch apart to get at the wire clamps, rewired the damn thing, reconstructed it, and then figured out how to fix it back in the wall. Turns out there is a system of outward facing clamps, operated by another two screws, inside the switch, so back to square one: dismantle, attach to wall, then replace switch mechanism.

By this time, the rain had stopped, so I could open the windows wide to use the vile, probably toxic spray for sealing stains in the ceiling. Wore a mask, but fumes still powerful. Dried quickly though... the aerosol can has a stern warning against 'vandalic usage' in a variety of languages, including Greek. Doesn't seem to deter the local wall poets, however, whose tags grace quite a few buildings in the old town.

Out with the Polyfilla for a few more linear metres of hairline cracks between plaster board panels. Ok, except for stair zone, which will require acrobatic skills to reach. Started work on painting in the front room. French paint is expensive and crap, like watered milk. It took two coats to cover a wall which was already white. Net result will be nice, though.

Glad to say that the lube job on the window mechanisms (where would we be without a can of WD40?) had worked a treat overnight, and now the windows close properly.

La Pluie

Caught in the winter rainstorm on the way back from the freezing flat. Too wet and blinded by the rain in my eyes to appreciate the spectacular lightning which accompanied it.

There ought to be a completely different word for rain of this kind. It comes down in great splashing horse urine squirts rather than in drops. Given that the roofs and guttering are not really up to it, the ill-advised pedestrian walking in the streets of the old town cops a concentrated deluge from broken drainpipes, balcony drain holes, shop awnings, and most of all from speeding cars, whose drivers actually aim for the rapidly growing lake next to the pavement, so as to create the desired speedboat effect of massive bow-wave.

Still, there are compensations: when, soaked to the skin and livid with cold, I dropped in to the local boulangerie to buy bread, the boulangère (Bulgarian) cut my baguette in two and wrapped it in a plastic bag, to protect it from the downpour. Little things like that restore faith in humanity.

Crap dogs, dog crap and crap day

This morning, on the way to the flat to await deliveries which didn't come, the whole town smelled of school lavatories: the dogshit brigade had come with their motorised infantry to mop up and sweep away the dog turds. Don't know where it goes: the amounts are colossal. Maybe Britain has a contract for retreatment, like for nuclear waste.

Speaking of dogs and crap dogs, I saw a chav unsuccessfully trying to pull his pitbull off a poodle: the hound had picked it up and was scrunching its bones - ghastly sound which brought the whole street out to watch. Poodle owner was glad not to be jawed so just picked up what remained of his mutt and ran off...

The crap day refers to waiting in the freezing flat for delivery of boxes from Scotland. I had been over-optimistic that they would come in the morning, thus freeing me for the afternoon. Naturally, they didn't come, so I was trapped, facing a lingering death by starvation and hypothermia.

Port de la Salis

Antibes's beaches run (from east to west) from the Gravette, tucked into the ramparts and almost surrounded by rock breakwaters, through to the Garoupe, hidden away in the woods of the peninsula. Just before the main beach in Antibes ends its long crescent, briefly interrupted by the outcrop of a sailing club, you come to the Salis beach. The beach terminates in a port for small craft, mostly runabouts, open fishing boats and the graceful pointus. These traditional half decked fishing boats are double enders, which lie squat in the water (easier to handle nets over the side) and are three times as long as they are in the beam, but apart from that, they are astoundingly varied in conception. Their DNA, though, is quite clearly Italian, and they bear more than a passing resemblance to the gozzo ligure craft one sees on the Ligurian coast. Very few seem still rigged for the lateen sail they once had.

The other notable feature of the Port de la Salis is the built in tiled seat running the length of the main, southern breakwater. Apart from the chance to gaze at all the boats, and to observe old Antibes as if from the sea (a good photo-opportunity), this long seat is a sun trap which attracts afternoon custom from a wide range of people, from nursing mothers to couples bringing a cool bottle of local white (and stem glasses! no plastic cups, please). Great place to read, as we could see.

Marché provençal

Like the market in Ventimiglia, the marché provençal in Antibes seems to cater for cross-border visitors. The stall-holders handle Italian and French with equal aplomb. Prices in Ventimiglia are quite a bit lower than those in Antibes: is it a question of expectations, or is it because of fiscal burdens on the French side?

The Antibes market seems better stocked in saucissons and hams, also in variety as regards cheeses, but the Ventimiglia market is far better for vegetables, salads and flowers.

Customers in Italy take their time, buying very small quantities of lots of different things, and asking pointed questions about taste and quality. It is worth waiting in the queue (notional) just to listen to the good humoured repartee. On the French side, there is more aggression, with little old ladies lethally carrying out the market equivalent of 'road rage': not to be messed around with if you value your tibias in one piece! Especially if they are equipped with both poodle and wheelie shopping bag (with vicious rear facing spikes).

High points of the Antibes market: a saucisson seller who boasts that his wares are 'bombes atomiques': don't know about the megaton yields, but the taste fall-out is persistent and glows in the dark. Wonderful! Some of the smaller fruit and vegetable stalls are also really good, even if they have very little on display. A nice lady from the Auvergne sold us some wonderful carrots and just about the best Savoy cabbage we have ever eaten. An old lady from Biot sells local fruit such as blood oranges and (earlier in the season) ripe figs.

After the hue and cry, escaping the tin shed and heading to the sea-wall and looking across to Nice, with Azure sea and the snowy mountains above just confirms that paradise does exist, and that cutting through a side-street is all that it takes to get there.

Low points: bad ceramics and other lurid 'art' work, including some Calder-esque wire sculptures of love-making positions; the usual wafts of patchouli and other now very dated hippy tat.