As the crow flies

The day before yesterday, it being hot, as usual, we decided to head for the hills again. The destination was Gréolières, a village on the Roman road from Vence up into the Alps. The etymology of the toponym was none too reassuring: gracularia, the place of crows. Didn't see any though, even though there were a few birds of prey hovering around, mixing with the hang-glider set. By the way, the tiny village you can see in the centre of the photo is Aiglun, presumably the place of eagles.

The village was charming, with the occasional real inhabitant, unlike most of the bijou villages perchés, with their shops, nay boutiques, selling soap, ceramics, perfume and cicada recordings. We bought plums, a baguette and some raw ham from the tiny épicerie, and headed off for the ski station even further up into the hills. Like all ski stations, snowless in summer, this looked like something from the Bosnian war, after the Serbs had cleaned up and mined it all. No matter, though, our destination was the big hillside on the other side of the valley from the ski slopes. There was a logic in the choice: two words are important in the local geographical descriptions, adret and ubac, referring respectively to south facing or north facing slopes. The ski slopes, naturally, needed to be ubac, to avoid the snow melting too soon, whereas for a nice summer walk we wanted an adret.

Sometimes, however, one can be on to too good a thing. As we set out, the mixed sun and pine tree shade dappling the path was very pleasant, but when we reached the more sparsely covered upper slopes (and we're talking of over 4,600 feet up), the full strength of the minimally filtered sun began to take its toll. A strange feeling, fresh air and a leaden sun. Still, the wild lavender, which was everywhere, seemed to thrive, as did all the splendidly gaudy butterflies.

On our way back, we met quite a few people coming up the road with buckets and plastic bags, clearly out to hunt something edible. I wonder what it was? Too early for mushrooms, surely, and too dry for snails.

Aérateur II

Ventum habemus. After bruised fingers, drops of copious almost cinematic sweat stinging in the eyes, and a fair bit of cursing (English expletives seemed appropriate to the locus), the aérateur has been installed, and made to function concurrently with the lighting. The trouble was that the lighting wiring was on one side of the room and the vent for the extractor was on the other.

The smallest room didn't seem very small when I had to run cabling around the tops of walls almost inaccessible to a hammer, which was needed to anchor the wire holding clips. The fan itself had to be embedded in a shelf, with an exact 100mm circle to cut out. Perfect circles are not easy to cut, particularly without a padsaw or circle cutter. I ended up drilling scores of holes, and then cutting between them with a chisel. The said shelf then needed putting up, in exact alignment with the pre-existent but hopelessly mis-positioned metal vent tubing, which had to be recut in situ. Nice job when it is next to the ceiling, in a dark corner, with insufficient room to work a saw. To cap it all, the walls were made of undrillable hollow brick (a kind of thick tile sandwich), so the supports for the shelf needed a different solution to the normal screws and wallplugs. I ended up paying through the nose for a specialist glue which will hold almost anything to anything.

Still, it works, when the lightswitch is flicked on, and it stops when the light is put out. Whether it will deal effectively with the aromatic aftermath of a cassoulet is something only time will tell.

Aérateur

Today was a moment for bricolage. For the culturally aware, this may be an anticlimax; because my bricolage involves the banishment, via an electrically driven fan, of expulsive digestive odours in the lavatory. Those who who have read the Urblog will remember my struggles with the 'throne'. Since then, I have done painting, tiling, lighting - and now it's the turn air quality.

The first stage was linguistic: what was the word for an extractor fan? I am beginning to be expert at interrogating the do-it-yourself websites, looking for the keywords that allow me to ask for the appropriate products. In this case the word that was missing was aérateur (note the accent on the 'e').

The next blog will be a real time account of how to control the aerateur.... without giving the impression one has set it in motion for a particular bodily reason.

Cipières

From our terrace, looking north, we can see the curtain walls of the town, the umbrella pines of the boulevard which runs round the port, the assorted masts and paraphernalia of the yachts in the harbour, the angled bastions of the Fort Carré, and far in the distance the inexorable rise of the hills as they struggle to gain altitude to call themselves the Alps. We look that way each morning, to see what the weather is doing, including fresh coverings of snow (in July).

Yesterday, tired of looking at this neverending spectacle from afar, we decided to go hiking in the foothills. The intended destination was Cipières, a village above the Gorges du Loup. As with almost any journey worth taking here, the first part was hell on wheels. The coastal strip must be one of the most concreted, motorised parts of Europe. An hour and a bit later, and a mere fifteen kilometers on the clock, we hit the Gorges du Loup, a dramatic cleft in the mountains, with the road precariously clinging to vertical cliffs and a torrent a vertiginous distance below. Cipières was at the end of a winding and dizzying road, largely made of small concrete beams levering off the cliff faces. Signs warning us of the dangers of rockfalls left us somewhat puzzled as to what to do if the eventuality actually arose.

From Cipières we headed up into the hills on foot, first on the GR4, and then on a local track. The aim was to see one of the many bories, or stone igloos, which still dot the countryside around here. The path, basically unstable scree, took us through a botanist's paradise, with huge clumps of thyme, savoury, origano, wild lavender and so on. As we marched through this herbiary, the plants exhaled a powerful, inebriating essence, distilled by sunshine. We filled our knapsacks with culinary abundance, whilst swatting away clouds of exotic butterflies (and the occasional, tenacious horsefly). Everywhere there were the signs of foraging by wild boar. Not animals you want to meet on a narrow path.

The landscape is carstic, weathered limestone, with extensive fields of steep scree (baous). Scratching a living from the land here (utterly parched in summer and buried in deep snow in winter) must have been a desperate business. Signs of titanic labour were everywhere, with terracing and destoning of tiny fields reaching well towards the near perpendicular summits. The borie, when we found it, was huge, with walls well over a metre thick, and an entrance which did not need you to stoop to get in. Life for the shepherd sent to pasture goats up there, at over 1000 metres altitude, must have been anguishing and lonely, like Ledda's account in Padre padrone.

Let there be music

One of the advantages of Antibes is that it gets some of the musical overflow from the Juan les Pins Jazz Festival. A week ago, for instance, we heard the Glenelg Jazz Ensemble from Washington DC. This school band, with some of the kids really young, produced better playing than I have heard in years. They really knew how to swing, and their ponytailed conductor-flautist was no mean dancer either. The night before last, it was the turn of the Delft Studenten Corps band from Holland. They were technically flawless, and had a good line in vocals too. More importantly, they put on a fantastic show. They were dressed in rumpled DJs, complete with orange bowties (what else?) and Heineken braces. More than half of them, being blond, bore a worrying likeness to Boris Johnson. There were trombone quartets played with the feet, like a chorus line of Tiller girls, there was a clarinettist who played Balkan rhythms over Glen Miller, whilst suspended upside down, there was a drum solo played on the outsize pads of a barytone saxophone. They ended their set dispersed amongst the crowds in the Place Nationale, singing and playing a rowdy Dutch (drinking?) song. The only slightly dubious note was the presence of less-than-respectable looking photographers, who seemed to be trying to groom some of the little girls tempted to dance in front of the stage.

Mondo bello

Last night saw the usual procession of limos stopping to drop 'people' off at Mamo's restaurant next door. One convoy consisted of the usual darkened glass black people carriers, front and rear, with the heavies, and sandwiched in between was a red sports car so low slung it had difficulty in negotiating the speed bump in front of our house. Clearly, security conditions weren't quite right, so the convoy went round the block again, the sports car roaring manfully as it negotiated the speed bump at approximately baby crawling pace. Second time round, the security detail judged things to be optimal. The burpmobile rolled to a halt in front of the restaurant door, gave one last blast of its throbbing exhaust, and deposited a diminutive but perfectly formed blonde into the restaurant.

A few minutes later, another convoy arrived. Somebody worth greeting, because Mamo and the whole équipe were there to salute the arrival. First out was the ubiquitous helper-door opener, next came a large but slightly superannuated dog, and finally a poor chap who struggled, even with Mamo's considerable muscle to help him, to get out of the car. Quite tall, and dressed in a Graham Green style tropical suit. What really impressed me, even at forty metres distance however, was that his enormous teeth glowed in the dark. Behind me, the BH said quietly, but with a certain frisson betraying life-affirming matinees at the cinema during important moments in her life, 'Celui-là, c'est Jean-Paul Belmondo.'

Those whom the gods love, die young. James Dean and his ilk. Belmondo has lived long enough for his beauty and vigour to founder on the rocks of time. Still, the fall from grace was from a height we can only imagine.

Maeghty waves

With S. and O. we went to visit the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence. The trip there was no great shakes: a succession of roundabouts and retail outlets, but once in the woods above Saint-Paul the spell began to work. The Famille Maeght supported Miro', and when they retired, they set up an exhibition space for their artist friends, in the hills above Cagnes.

I'm not an unconditional fan of Miro' (though I like his small scale ceramics), but what really blew me was the museum setting itself. Rarely have I seen (except perhaps in Barcelona and Poitiers) modern museums that gave such a purpose to visiting the artworks. I felt at times, whilst wandering around the artfully defined meanders, changes of level, plays with direct and indirect natural light, that I was in some mysterious monastery for a stern religion I knew nothing about, but could sense from the sheer balance of masses and volumes. Wonderful, just wonderful.

On return, I went for a swim, despite the admonitory orange flags. The swell was impressive, with a vicious undertow, but some people were porpoising through the breakers, so I thought I'd give it a try. I put on my swimming goggles and launched myself through the substantial surf. It was thrilling and a real adrenalin rush. I played around in the metre and a half swells, yelling as I launched myself off the curling lip of the waves just about to crash over (and showing clear blue through to the other side). Then I started swimming shorewards and quickly realised my mistake. Trying to swim to land through surf is really hard. I got spun around like in a washing machine on spin cycle, and only too late realised that the waves were full of fair sized rocks, carried on the force of the undertow. In fact it was pretty dangerous. I staggered out, raw at the knees, and somewhat lacking in dignity. Some of the other swimmers actually had blood coming from their scrapes. Still, no lasting damage done, and an important lesson learnt.

Contrasts

Not all the rich moor their tubs in the port of Antibes. Some just anchor offshore. Maybe only the really rich appreciate the savings of not paying so much in mooring charges whilst still lashing out so much on crewing, fuel and insurance charges.

A bit like loitering behind a taxi instead of loitering behind a bus. Bigger notional saving, but pretty poor viewed from the outside.

In the last week, we have seen, off the Gravette, A a sinister James Bond vessel, the Delphine, a steamship of the 1920's, and the inimitable footballer chic of the Maltese Falcon. All of them for hire, all of them spic and span, but all of them operating in a pitiless environment of unaffordable port fees.

Pink Cardboard

That's it: I've now got a French driving licence, after months of being a non-person thanks to the incompetence of the DVLA. Doesn't change much in France, but paradoxically the piece of pink cardboard, issued by the Sous Préfecture in Grasse, will allow me to drive in the UK. Strange place, Europe...

Scam

The rue Lacan between the English pub and the post office is something of a dog toilet, so we are used to walking with our eyes peeled for faecal matter on the pavement. Yesterday, as we were heading for the shops, a lady dressed in what could be described as gypsy/arab clothes came up to us and asked, in French but with a foreign accent, if we knew who had dropped the ring which she had just found on the pavement. Was it gold, she asked. Did we want it, as it was against her religion to wear jewels. When we said it ought to be deposited with the police, she pressed it into our hands, started to walk off, then wheeled round and asked us for money. Of course it was a scam. We deposited the ring pointedly where she had claimed to have found it. I prefer honest begging to that kind of insult to the intelligence. I wonder how often it works, though...

Fête de Saint Jean

Last night, strolling by the capitainerie du port (harbour master's office doesn't quite do justice to the idea of rich man's factotum such posts project here), we heard music wafting over the waters of the yacht basin. It was coming from the Bastion Saint Jaume, the old arsenal built when the port was fortified by Vauban - and now turned into a 'cultural space'. We went to investigate.

Somebody had lit a large bonfire, and people were dancing round it. Of course, it was the annual fire-worship night, the Fête de Saint Jean. Tradition has it that couples who leap over the bonfire together will get married within the year. In these days of modulable marital arrangements, I wonder what happens if people married to each other make the leap. Does it include separations and divorces?

To the sounds of three holed flutes, an accordeon, a fiddle, assorted drums and tambourines, and, most traditionally of all, a Fender Telecaster bass guitar, groups of people of all ages danced with a kind of frenzied skill. They really knew the steps. The nearest thing I have seen to it is a Scottish ceilidh, the same sort of assumption that everybody knew what to do. One unprepossessing couple, the man bald and wearing an accountant's expression after one too many ledger inspected, his partner with the skin quality that only too much sun and a regular supply of cigarettes can provide, dominated the proceedings. As they twirled around the fire on the baked earth dance floor, little puffs of dust came up from their fleeting feet, perfectly in time.

Heldentenor

I was walking along the rue Aubernon, heading for the Boulangerie La Belle Epoque to get the morning's semi-industrial quantities of bread and viennoiseries. The streets were still wet after the passage of the cleaning lorries, and the delivery men were working full swing replenishing the bars with their stock for the evening's beuverie.

Suddenly, over the metallic din of beer kegs being rolled from lorries, there came a sweet tenor voice, from the part of the street reserved for an antiques market (flea market really). The tune was what attracted me first: a modified and quirky version of "O sole mio". It was only when I got closer that I could pick out the text. The Heldentenor was lyrically intoning, with perhaps a touch of indulgent melisma and rubato, "O va fa'n cu-ulo, faccia di me-erda" as he was setting out his stall of junk. It was perhaps the most successful combination of pre-existent text and pre-existent music since Parry and Blake were married to each other in Jerusalem.

A circle of admiring junk dealers crowded around and joined in, perfectly in tune and on time, for the final, exquisite "merda". It was one of those fairytale operatic moments when, at the theatre, you forget the daft libretto, the wooden acting and the uncomfortable seats in the stalls, and just soak in the emotion. As of course you are meant to do.

After buying the bread, and on my way back through the flea market, I could see that the same auteur was now addressing his fellow squatters. They were approving of a recent move by the gardes mobiles, a somewhat antiquated term for the dreaded CRS riot police, to rid Antibes of traveling folk, aka gypsies, aka Romanians. The junk sellers, all franco-français and LePennistes, couldn't see the irony in the fact that they too were occupying public space, creating an obstruction, and (for those privileged to understand Italian) debasing the local moeurs with their exotic song.