Flaneries

Baudelaire did it in Paris. Walter Benjamin got into Passagenwerk, too, in Paris mostly. I've got into Kennington, Lunnun town.

Couple of observations, just haphasardly...

In Kennington's magnificent supermarket, not far from the gasworks, frequented assiduously by the usual sandwich buyers (working in estate agents', judging by the cheap suits) and hypercaloric ethnic mums (where are the dads?), when looking for sardines for the sprog, I came across the proud Shitto brand of tinned fish. One wonders whether nomina sunt consequentia rerum...

In the National Gallery shop, when looking for postcards, came across a very lifelike Vincent Van Gogh doll, not for the under fives, according to the label, which boasted a detachable ear. I checked. The left ear, disturbingly lifelike, was on a velcro mounting. Was it his left ear he razored, I wonder?

Outside Downing Street, a couple of clearly very special, special, special advisers, bearing 'important papers', were unceremoniously turned away from the bigwigs' entrance and told to stand in the queue with the rest. They were mightily offended, but gave in in the end. The officer who performed this exquisitely satisfying ritual, which briefly restored my faith in democracy, was armed with an automatic pistol on the right hip, and what looked like a Taser on the left. Which would he have used in the event of trouble?

Guest Editorship

Today Antiboiseries is being guest-edited by me, Arthur Usher, as the usual blogger is swanning around in sunny Kennington town, wheeling me around in my pram, which he still doesn't drive that well. I have shown him all the local sights, including the supermarket, the city farm, the swing park and - last but not least - the back garden, where I have been trying to explain the theory of bipedal locomotion to quizzical onlookers. Once I had a sufficient audience, I showed them it was easy in practice, too.

There was a price to pay, though, as Taid insisted on making me cawl cennin* for today's lunch, and I was obliged to polish off a whole bowlful, leaving him with none for his own ethnic cravings (the real reason he had made it in the first place).

After this luncheon, I explained the finer points of Duplo deconstruction, knocking spots off mere Derridean rivals, before playing a few show-off arpeggios on Mummy's guitar.

*translated from the normal blogger's barbarous middle-high Taidish, this comes out in English as plain leek soup. I made him alter the recipe to include a nourishing spoonful of creme fraiche, as Nana is French.

Calabrisella mia

On my way back from a fruitless attempt to find a parking space at the rue Lacan (there has been a totally predictable cock-up in our booking of the new underground carpark), I discovered the reason why Antibes was chock ablock with cars looking for a space. Apart from the wedding industry (positively Fordist in its cadenced Saturday intensity), today is the beginning of the local Calabrian festivities. Many of the 'Italians' here are southern, and most of them are Calabrian.

The thudding sounds of drums and the shamanistic rattle of massed tambourines, in the insistent rhythm of the tarantella, accompanied by almost trance inducing ostinato figures on the accordeon, announced the arrival of the contingent, which marched with extraordinary discipline and distinctly un-French precision. It was a stirring sight.

What is strange is that the toe of Italy, just about as far south as you can get in Europe, has traditions that look as if they come straight from Bavaria. Exquisite scarlet and white costumes for both men and women, knee-breeches and dirndls respectively, super-competent oompah bands, you name it. The similarities are uncanny. The only difference is in the skin colour, a healthy tan over that olive complexion you get in the deep South, instead of pasty faces and freckles. Maybe it's the preference for vino rosso over Bier that explains it.

Kackejaegerstaffel

Sometimes we are woken up, around 5.30 - 6.00am, by the sound of high pressure hoses. La ville d'Antibes has a fleet of small tankers, about the size of a campervan, which clean the streets and the gutters with high pressure hoses. The spray is incredibly effective, removing most of the signs of the evening before's (possibly Anglophone) debauchery: drink cans, plastic beer glasses, coke stains, chips still in their cardboard basket (with ketchup), spray-painted vomit.

But this Sarkosyan karcherisation has almost no effect on the ubiquitous dog turds, which seem to contain their own adhesive, both for sticking to the street and for clinging to your shoes. This is where the municipal motocrottes come into their element. They are standard scooters, emblazoned with the city's coat of arms, but with a powerful vacuum-cleaner riding pillion. Two nozzles, on extensible hose-pipes, run down each side, towards the rear wheel.

When the motocrottiste spots a turd at three o'clock, he scatters pedestrians in a full power frontal attack, performs a balletic swerve, aims one of the nozzles towards the pavé and bags, vrooom, tatatatatat, another kill. Some of these chaps deserve the Blue Max, but their survival time, against all the canine odds, must be measured in weeks, if not days.

Theory proved

Well, not really proved, but sort of psychologically, pre-scientifically reinforced. The wind has turned and started to blow from the south, from the Mediterranean. According to my grand universal hydraulic theory, the lovely warm water should be quitting Palermo and heading back for Antibes. Wherever it came from, the water, though not tropical, was noticeably warmer, and the day before's inhuman grimaces as the water hit the gonads did not seem to be in much evidence.

Vent de terre

Yesterday's baignade was bracing. Strange, because the wind, coming off the land and heading for the sea, was actually hot, like that puff of superheated air when you bend down and open an oven, pulling back your head involuntarily when the heat hits you.

This morning, after a complicated search for beach toys (now definitely out of season) for grandson to use in his London sandpit, we ended up on the sandy Ponteil beach, the one with the wonderful view and the shallow water. The high buildings behind the beach protected us from the wind, and the sun was hot enough to make us sweat. Mindful of yesterday's sea temperature, the BH decided not to swim, but yours truly thought - publicly for purely visual reasons: blue sky, blue sea, brilliant sunshine on the Alps, but privately out of misplaced machismo - that a dip would be really nice.

I waded in, and as I did so, I saw the contortions of all the fellow bathers, male and female, as the waves reached for the sensitive parts of their anatomy. It was too cold to stay for long. The water was what Edinburgh east folk would call 'Baltic', pronounced boll-tukh in their peculiarly gracious patois. But why was it so cold? Nineteen degrees apparently, instead of a usual twenty-four.

My theory, unsupported by any scientific evidence, is that the offshore wind has driven all that lovely warm surface water past Corsica and on towards Africa. What we now need is a brisk onshore wind to drive back 'our' warm water, unjustly heating the northern coast of Sicily and Tunisia.

Windy

Some time ago, the roller blind on the outside of our attic Velux window decided to give up the ghost. The roller mechanism gave way, leaving the ribbed metal (plastic?) blind to unfurl in a sad series of bunches which prevented the Velux itself from opening. But without opening the window, how do you get at the blind? And without removing the blind, how do you open the window?

Today, Nature found a simple, Gordian remedy. A violent gusty wind from the north east picked up the blind and its metal casing, which are quite heavy, and flipped them casually 180 degrees. We can now see through the Velux, and just pray that the wind does not send the whole caboodle sailing through the air to crash into the street.

I shall be following the weather forecasts for the next couple of days...