Privatisation of public space

We live on a lane which changes from rat-race to no-go area at the whim of a well-known Antibes restauranteur, who employs suited gorillas to enforce his dictats. Woe betide anybody who dares to ask where, and for how long, the official notice of closure has been displayed. That's the way things happen down here.

This week is the perfect closure (think 'perfect storm'), as the antiques sellers have occupied most of the boulevard d'Aguillon and most of the car park near the Harbourmaster's Office; the Antibes Yacht Show has declared out of bounds the south side of the Port Vauban; and on Thursday the market stallholders will invade the area next to the post office with their white vans. And this comes at the usual Easter moment when all the cafés and restaurants begin to encroach abusively on the pavements, beyond their allotted tolerance zone, leaving little room for pedestrians between the abusively parked cars, scooters and motorbikes and the ever-present dog-turds.

Suddenly, as spring arrives, Antibes runs out of elbow-room...

ça y est

That's it! Madame Tourterelle has eaten from my hand without holding on to the railings of the balcony. A jump onto my fingers of at least 60cm. She must have been desperate.

My calculations were different. Once she was supported in my hand, exclusively, I had a chance to weigh her (minus the rice in my palm). Another couple of months of avian-human contact and she will be ready for a pie. Pigeon or turtle dove, disnae matter...

Only joking. The feeling of having a wild animal trust you totally is absolutely addictive. And when she pecks between your fingers, looking for that last grain of (discount) rice, you feel that your place in the world is really necessary. Wish it was the same with the genus homo sapiens.

Update and small triumph

Some weeks of silence on the blog. Not a cause for preoccupation, rather I have been busy, alongside the other Copains des Pointus, brandishing screwdriver, hammer and paintbrush, readying the Caribe for its summer sorties. The work is hard, but it's good fun, because the conversation is lively and I am learning a lot about woodworking.

The lifeboat front has been fairly quiet. Not much in the way of shouts, and quite a bit of ordinary housekeeping, including counting the grubby coins from the collecting boxes (think two kilos of tiddlers, and imagine how long it takes to calculate its very modest value). Still, it is in a good cause.

The treatment at Mougins is more than half way through. I'm beginning to have the side-effects they warned me about, but altogether it is pretty bearable. I'm looking forward to not having to do the daily drive, when it is all over.

A small triumph over the weekend. I have been hand-feeding a male turtle-dove, who greedily zaps my palm in search of grains of rice. Meanwhile, his missus, much thinner, just sat and watched enviously, a metre away. Well, Saturday morning, before lifeboat practice, missus waddled up shyly and began to peck at my hand alongside her mate. I now have the two of them feeding - a blur of heads bobbing up and down. The rice levels go down fantastically fast, but it is really cute to watch. Photo courtesy of the BH.

Sunbed

Really nice weather today, so the BH decided it would be great if we could take the ferry over from the old port of Cannes to Sainte Marguerite. Cannes was in turmoil: the entire port area is being dug up, perhaps for drains. Still, we got to the car-park, bought our ferry tickets, and took a stroll whilst waiting for the boarding time. As now happens increasingly frequently, we met somebody we knew from Antibes, so the wait was enlivened by good conversation.

The ferry across was alarmingly overcrowded on the upper deck. Don't blame the passengers, who all wanted the sunshine and the view, but I thought it was a bit lax of the crew.

Once on the island, the crowds dispersed, mostly to find picnic spots and to open bottles of chilled rosé (a good idea we somehow omitted to have).

We ate our own spartan picnic (rice crackers and cottage cheese, followed by a banana)° on a metre-thick matress of dried poseidonia grass, as level as a bed, and wonderfully soft and clean. The BH took a picture of me, dozing in the sunshine. I was in exactly the same position as in the linear accelerator at Mougins, but this time the energy sensually caressing me and warming up my molecules came from an already generous sun.

In the car, on the way back, threading through the traffic chaos of Cannes, we began to feel the first tingling of sunburn: it's still only March, dammit.

°The BH heroically stuck to my dietary constraints.

Yellow Jersey

Going to get fried by the x-ray machine at Mougins has become routine. The process is very slick, and no time is wasted. But during the minute or so whilst the cross-hairs of the lasers are being lined up on my abdomen, the 'manipulateurs' keep chatting, probably to calm down nervous patients.

After a while, you get to know them, in a superficial way. Given that they are dealing with fairly intimate parts of your body (their first act to to pull down your underpants), the chat sometimes takes on a slightly intimist twist.

Last time, for instance, the lady in charge, who had been shunting me around on the slab in what could only be described as a burly fashion, started pinching my thighs and said, dreamily: "Monsieur, vous avez les jambes d'un cycliste". I found it hard to stay still in the machine after that. Was it a compliment?

Beeped

After radiotherapy (a fair old whack, judging by the noises and wheezes coming from the machine), I spent a pleasant afternoon working on the Caribe, trying to reconstruct the anchor winch. Then, as sometimes happens in Antibes, somebody stopped by and offered a pointu, with motor, for nothing. We told the guy to bring it to the lifeboat station.

Lulu and I went there to help moor the boat. As we were tying up, the lifeboat pagers went off. So we abandoned the boat and went into 'shout' routine. Off into the increasing gloom, some ten nautical miles off Nice, to tow back a large motor yacht which had lost all power, both engines and generator. Took some finding, as there are a lot of radar echoes, what with the port traffic, the aircraft flying low, and the ferries.

Still, we found her, finally, dead in the water and rolling quite violently beam on to the swell. This was the first time I had to cast a heaving line for real. Ticklish, given the movement of the two boats in three dimensions. A matter of timing as well as aim. I was very relieved that it was spot on, first pass. Lolo1's patient instruction paid off, evidently.

The trip back was long and boring, as usual, as we were much reduced in speed (7kts instead of 25kts). The deck crew, apart from the deputy cox, steering, was effectively two grandfathers: the third grandpops was keeping radar/radio watch. We managed OK, despite a combined age well in excess of the limits set down in the SNSM regulations.

Took some photos the next morning: they had run out of fuel, but not of Spanish beer (click on the photo of the stern, and look at the ladder).

Makes you forget the hum and whine of the X-ray machines...

How about a slip jig next time

After the by now routine session of being microwaved (that's exactly the sound it makes) at Mougins, I spent the afternoon painting the Caribe. Lots of people passed by, and I wondered why nearly all of them, particularly the schoolkids, started enthusing madly. It wasn't us wrinklies, in various undignified postures - and possible builder's cleavage - who made them ooh and aah. It was the ship's dog, Choco, who was doing a decidedly neat hornpipe on his hind legs. He deserved all the photos he was getting. Haven't yet seen him doing steps in 9/8 time, though...

Time of mellow fruitlessness

Because the radiation treatment I am presently undergoing is likely to harm, temporarily, the lining of my gut, I have been told to follow a strict diet. Out go fruit and vegetables, bread, smelly cheeses, spices, pretty well all the reasons for finding Mediterranean life rather agreeable. In come prodigious quantities of bland stuff: rice above all, pasta (not wholemeal), couscous etc., but without the bonus of a nice tasty sauce. The effect, in terms of reduction of what is politely termed 'bulk residue', is quite dramatic. To top it all, I have to consume very large amounts of water. So what time I save in cutting down on solid evacuation I make up for and more in the other, liquid one.

Protein inputs, on the other hand, have to be increased substantially, but not fried or greasy. However, when this means putting up with simply baked, plain, ultra-fresh mackerel, stiffly straight off the boat, it isn't too much of a penance. Even without the horseradish or gooseberries...

Other than that, morale is good and time spent on the boats is uplifting as well as healthy.

Beam me up, Scotty...

That's it: I've started the course of radiotherapy at Mougins, and I feel strangely relieved.

The first session was friendly, supportive and slick. I was through the changing room, placed under the radiation, got back in my clothes and was out in less than twenty minutes. The only visible sign of my passage through the system was a series of colour splashes with a felt-tip pen, highlighting the tattoos used for aiming the beams of radiation.

The one thing that shocked me, however, was seeing how many people were being lined up for treatment. It puts one's personal predicament into stark perspective.

The black spot(s)

No, it didn't happen at the Admiral Benbow. I was at Mougins for the 'simulation', or trial run for the radiotherapy. Lots of time in a machine, with strange whirrings only a centimetre from my skull and an absolutely irresistible urge to move (streng verboten). Afterwards, I was half-extricated, by remote control, from the tunnel of wonders and left on my own for what seemed a very long time. It was probably only a couple of minutes, but time plays tricks in such environments.

Then the 'manipulateur' came back from behind the radiation shields and announced he was going to mark me. Out with a marker pen, on with the laser to get the crosshairs lined up. But after the felt-tip came the tattoo. Nothing worse than a horsefly bite, he said. But I was too trussed up to either compare or object. What was surprising was that the bits I was apprehensive about were relatively insensitive, whereas other areas, for which I had no fear, were quite high on the 'ouch' scale.

Showering temporarily forbidden whilst the ink gets absorbed into my system.

I now have strange dots in even stranger (and certainly unmentionable) places. They will allow the ballistics experts to fire their broadsides of radiation into the corners and folds where the nasties may be lurking. The fuses are lit, and it all lights up on February 14th, at 11.30.

My Way

About a week ago, loud, virile singing wafted up from the Club des Pétanquiers in the ramparts. Not an unusual occurrence, as there are some Spanish speakers, probably dustbin-men or street cleaners, who during their break for breakfast clap artfully and sing flamenco style with glottal verve. Most of the time it is traditional, if long, laments of lost love, with ululations and piercing, gonad-wrung ejaculations of suffering.

This time, the complex clapping was the same, the melismata, too, were equally Moorish, but there was something about the prosody and, albeit almost completely hidden, about the melody that was familiar. I listened to the words, catching on nearly at the end of the outpouring:

Puedo llegar
hasta el final
A mi manera

Got it: it was the Antibes refuse department's rousing Spanish language version of "I'll do it my way". I think Ole Blue Eyes would have approved.

Baie des milliardaires

Yesterday the Copains des Pointus d'Antibes were doing one of the things they were set up for, namely providing boating experience for kids who are having trouble fitting in. It was a trial run, with one social worker and just one delinquent. Both the social worker and the delinquent were good company, and the only way to tell them apart (both were wearing shades and leather jackets) was that the youngster was wearing a hoodie... with attitude.

After an initial problem with the boat's batteries, we fuelled up at the marine service station and headed for the Anse de l'argent faux, otherwise known as the Baie des milliardaires. The weather was really nice, with sunshine on the cactus-covered cliffs and a nice sparkle in the barely ruffled sea. We anchored close in, giving a quick pulse of reverse to get the anchor to bite. Not a good idea, as the inflatable was on a long line, and the painter caught around the propeller.

Who was going to brave the water to go down and unwrap the propeller? Nobody sounded keen, not even the delinquent. For once I had an almost good idea. I spotted some snorkel divers hunting for fish off the rocks. They were hailed and did the business with aplomb, using the kind of diving knives which inspire respect. Luckily, they had put the safety catches on their lethal-looking harpoon guns.

Once this local bother had been solved, we set to enjoying a picnic of chicken, baguette, crisps and (this being the Copains after all) no trace of either salad or fruit.

The journey back, with the sun behind us and the greenery of the Cap d'Antibes lit up by the scarlet pokers of agave flowers, was a treat for millionaires. The youngster couldn't wait to get back to his pals, however, as there were probably more interesting things to smoke than the regular cigarettes he had lit up on the boat (and had been polite enough to offer around). None of our business, and certainly not part of the programme of the Copains des Pointus. Still, he was adroit and helpful when mooring the boat back at the quay.

Some more of his ilk are going to come, next month, to help scrape barnacles off the hull and repaint it. It should be an agreeable learning experience all round.