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.

Comparisons, comparisons...

This morning, as I was cleaning, scraping rust and repainting the crew seats in the lifeboat, an Italian couple came to have a look round. He boarded with alacrity; she, very sensibly, took one look at the yawning gap between the superannuated gang-plank and the boat and decided to stay on the dockside.

The chap was full of intelligent questions and very curious. Last stop on the look-round was the engine room. Here, he was strangely unimpressed, whereas most people are quite overwhelmed by the sight of two monstrous twelve-cylinder turbodiesels in a confined space. He seemed to know something about motors, however, so I asked him whether he had a motorboat.

Yes he did, he said, on the river Po: a racing boat powered by AlfaRomeo engines. He had taken part in the annual Po race, all the way to Venice. How long had it taken him, in driving time? A mere three hours. I calculated he must have been skimming along at between 130 and 140 kms an hour. Good job he didn't hit one of the many supermarket trolleys thrown into the Po.

Beats the lifeboat's 46 kms an hour, by a considerable margin, but I'm not sure he'd like to take it out in the seas we get here.

Nice day out

Quick trip to Nice today, for a bit of a city stroll, a touch of shopping, a tasty meal at the reliably excellent Lu fran Calin restaurant, a wander around the flower stalls at the Cours Saleya, and a wee peek at the crèche in the cathedral. The last was a strange experience. All the life-size figures (probably window dresser's dummies) were blond, blue-eyed, and vapid (possibly heroin chic) with the exception of a 'smoulderingly sexy' Joseph who strangely resembled Cat Stevens in his days before becoming Yusuf Islam.

A blue Christmas

No, not a sad Christmas, just splendid blue skies, a friendly sea (with bathers) and a nice, long bike ride along the coast to Nice. The coastal cycle-track and promenade were packed with people doing something better than waiting for the bird and trimmings to roast.

When we got back, still in our cycling togs, we had our apéritif (a very fruity, mellow Alsace white) on the roof terrace. We shared our nibbles, including some very more-ish grissini from Veziano's, with the tutelary turtle doves, who sat at, or rather on, our table and were good company.

Cross-border raid

Yesterday we spent a very pleasant day out, partly in Menton and partly just over the border into Italy, to stock up on booze and other goodies.

Menton was its usual ravishing self, with the Portmeirion backdrop of pastel and ochre houses and churches, fringed by a nice, clean harbour. I even added another lifeboat to my collection.

We had a light meal in a café and then went to visit the new Cocteau museum. The original nucleus of the collection had been held in the quaint citadel next to the port. Now a large building, looking like botched dentistry on a horse, and jarring mightily with the surroundings, has been built. The inside is ever so slightly better, if you like endless, unimaginative expanses of white. The collections, though, were stunning, with lots of pencil and pen-and-ink drawings, posters, notebooks, letters. In particular, the works he did whilst being weaned off opium addiction were searing and powerful. Worth the crowded motorway journey on their own.

We then dropped a notch or two in the cultural pecking order by heading for the CONAD supermarket in Latte, just over the border. It was, just like last time, besieged by uncouth, unpleasant French day-trippers elbowing each other out of the way to get at the bargains. What the Italian staff and customers thought of this unrivalled rudeness does not bear thinking about. Mind you, we were probably counted as part of the unwelcome herd. Top of the discoveries were fresh ravioli stuffed with chopped borage. Definitely worth eating again.

Some of the products deserve a photo, like the moving pan-European collaboration to produce whisky (enlarge the photo by clicking on it), the 'mental' hooch and the metre and a half salame.

Let them eat cake

Last night, for the first time, I attended the annual Yule Log festivities in the Safranier. The BH had been there on previous occasions, but events had always conspired to keep me away. This time we were with friends: Gérard, Olga, Michel.

The very active comité du quartier of this whacky comune libre, aided and abetted by master baker Veziano (with father Xmas hat and rolled up sleeves) and master patissier Cottard, had produced a sumptuous log roughly 21 feet in length. But length isn't everything: the diameter of the log was about ten times normal. I found this out to my cost when roped in with four others to carry a short section on a board to the cutting tables. It was like carrying a bier already loaded with a corpulent corpse! Lifeboat first aid practice stood me in good stead, and the patient was not tipped onto the ground.

The amount of cake was simply mind-boggling. This being France, though, the challenge of scoffing the lot was quickly taken up, and at the end not even crumbs were to be seen. The steady stream of steaming mulled wine may have had something to do with it.

The cutting and candle-lighting ceremony was celebrated by ZéZé, the madcap 'burgermeister' of the comune libre, dressed in probably purloined full religious vestments, humbly assisted by the real mayor, who is a government minister (and from the religious right). This topsy-turvy, slightly anticlerical situation was to everybody's taste, especially the mayor's, as he loves getting back to his home patch and roots and having a good laugh.

The atmosphere, which began festively, became steadily more bacchanalian, with impromptu singing in Italian and affectionately rude insults traded in Antibes patois. Huge fun was had by all.

Bread and wine

How to break bread, and, yes, it does feel sacramental...


Notice the crispy stem and the yummy, doughy goblet bowl. One side is moulded, the other is rough. Dont worry, the explanation for all this can be found below, if you have the patience to read on.

After some dull work fruitlessly scrubbing the Caribe's inflatable dinghy to remove the sun-baked gunge of a whole summer, I downed tools with Gérard, an ex-teacher, and went for a stroll in old Antibes. We both had hidden gems to show each other.

Whilst we were looking at the cathedral bell-tower, with its re-used Roman masonry replete with bits of sculpture and epigraphy, the concierge of the Chapelle du Saint Esprit came out and invited us to look round the chapel, as the town council were in session. We crept in as quietly as we could, and looked down from the public gallery, formerly the organ loft I suppose, as the mayor reeled off statistics and regulations without once having recourse to notes. Pretty impressive.

Then it was Gérard's turn, and he took me to an improbably small house in the Place du Safranier, and regaled me with stories about Bernard, now in his eighties, who has kept all his drawings from school and puts on little exhibitions of youthful memorabilia outside his house. I recognised his style: he is the chap who does the posters for all the strange events which take place in the square - cubic pétanque, chestnut roasting, Portuguese dancing, Piedmontese singing, twelve metre long christmas logs (one coming up this weekend).

On the move again, we passed in front of Veziano's bakery, with its solitary olive tree standing guard. I told Gérard about the traditional craft bread, the delicious fougasse, the pissaladière. He just had to go in. Maitre Veziano was on his own, and in a talkative mood. In between dealing with bemused customers, he launched into his surprisingly sophisticated philosophy of bread, including the deontology of the baker and the duties of the bread-eater. He was about to get on to what I took to be the ontological proof of the existence of yeast when his wife entered the shop. He took immediate advantage to lead us ceremoniously down to the actual bakery.

Both Gérard and myself had worked in bakeries when young, and the smell of rising dough and raw flour, coupled with the presence of a watchful cat, took us straight back, in a truly Proustian intermittence du coeur. Strange that it should be the raw smells, rather than the cooked, but I suppose that the baking bread aroma is really associated with buying and eating, rather than our erstwhile hard graft lugging flour, measuring, kneading and putting the dough to prove.

While down there, the baker showed us his experiments. He is a sort of Heston Blumenthal of bread, with some wild ideas for a bready future. His miniature breads were exquisite masterpieces, as fine as the best patisseries. No wonder that the Monégasque mariage princier made use of his services.

But for me, the high point was his chalice bread. Ah, you say, that's what the pictures are about. The laboured structuralist reasoning behind the chalice form didn't particularly turn me on (too many oppositional matrices rammed down my throat as a student), but the contrast between a generously doughy goblet part and a crispy, almost breadstick stem was absolutely delicious, as was the expertly risen sourdough, which gave a nice tart finish to the crust. To be broken, not cut, the baker inveighed. But absolutely to be tried, say I, by anybody who has the good luck to pass through old Antibes. A glass of wine and a hunk of chalice bread - now there's a good mystery, even for the profane.

Expensive repairs

Having replaced all the battery circuits, it was time to test the engines. These have been causing us some worries lately, with geysers of coolant spraying round the engine-room whenever we have asked for a bit of oomph. The problem appeared to be in the heat exchangers, fairly expensive kit.

After a couple of trips out to sea, in grey winter weather with a big swell nicely decorated with a mistral-driven cross-chop, the engineers had narrowed the fault down to the starboard intercooler, and had named a price for replacement which turned us all grey, or perhaps green. The boat in all other respects had behaved splendidly, if one counts it as primarily a submarine, not a surface vessel. It was good to get some rough weather practice... despite all the hosing down afterwards.

So the boat is temporarily out of commission whilst the haggling over price, liability etc. continues between the station and Paris. This suits the cox fine, as he is now able to pay a brief visit to his parents in Normandy after a two year gap.

Back to the old routine

Well, that's it: the summertime truce has ended and I am now back into the routine of hospital visits. Yesterday was a consultation with a radiologist. Today is a bone-scan, Monday is an upper-body scan, and so on. I'll be consuming a goodly proportion of the local electricity generating capacity, and absorbing some pretty interesting chemicals and isotopes. Treatment will be decided in January.

But before that kicks in, we'll be out on the lifeboat this morning, with a reduced crew, testing all the battery circuits we have been labouring over. We finished them last night, in a cramped, sweaty space next to the steering gear which reminded me of working in a mine. Only one spectacular short circuit to boast of, occasioning an impressive arc of sparks, with no damage done to either the boat or people. Good job, too, because those batteries pack 340 ampères of punch, enough to kill you several times over, and start the turbodiesel engines afterwards.