More time away...

So after Paris we took one of those speedy double-decker trains down to Lyon. Why Lyon? Partly just because it's a part of France we've never been to before. We arrived in Lyon on the Saturday afternoon (6th October) and it was hotter than a Scottish summer's day and busy and really very lovely as cities go. We walked, saw the new town, the quite old town and then very old town. Then we got the funicular up the hill to see the views out over them all... and then we went back down again to eat a very nice meal indeed (guidebook said the food in Lyon is some of the best in France - quite some statement - and it seems the book was right). Young one had such a nice chocolate dessert that she went quite giddy...

 

whilst Mark pronounced the white wine I'd ordered (some Mâcon) the "best he'd ever tasted" (we were, fairly evidently, high on life... or wine and chocolate anyway). For me it was just nice to be outside and not fighting off pigeons (as in Paris). I do not like to eat with pigeons round my ankles!

Anyway on the Sunday we made our way to the Institut Lumière for it was here, in Lyon, that the whole business of cinema/film really started (and remember we have young film fan on board). The Institut, as you might expect, is not the most kid friendly tourist attraction in the world but she still enjoyed it (all worship the audioguide!) and we did too (it was quite laid-back, old-school...). The photo at the top is just one of the rooms in the museum... there was a film showing... there was no-one else in there... I liked the shapes.

After this we took the bright and shiny Lyon metro back into town:

 

ate more, even went to the cinema (in French... mais bien sûr!), ate ice-cream, took another metro...

And then on the Monday we picked up a hire car and headed, quite literally, for the hills. First Chambéry (lunch break - nice fountain full of elephants) and then Annecy (to see the lake, to eat more...). Annecy, for most visitors, is picture-postcard-pretty:

 

 

and judging by all the restaurants it must be HEAVING in the summer months. We stayed in a place just on the edge of the town (quiet, up in the hills really) and then the next day headed for Switzerland. But that will be next post.

Some time away...

So, we went on holiday (Angus schools get first two weeks of October off, remember?). Full photos are going up on facebook for those who are interested but for the rest of you there will be a quick round-up in a few little posts.

We left home on 2nd October and took the train down to London (family railcard cheapo travel) and then the Eurostar to Paris. It was my first ever time in the Channel Tunnel (and it's been open for 18 years!) and I only needed one small beer from the bar to take my ever-anxious mind off the slight strangeness of being in an underwater train for over 20 miles. Daughter (now 12 but still delightfully wide-eyed) was surprised (and no doubt a little disappointed) not to be able to see the water of the Channel while we were in there. Mark did the technical explanations (but she probably didn't listen... we are not very interested in real things still...). For those of us who grew up taking slow trains and ferries and then more slow trains to get to the city of love it does make the whole business very easy! Arriving quite late in Paris we took a beautiful cab ride to kind cousin's place over near the big famous tower, drank some wine and then collapsed into beds.

Day one of serious tourist activity included a trip up the big famous tower for the braver members of the party (i.e. not me!) and then a walk over towards the Arc de Triomphe and along the Champs-Élysées before a cup of very fancy tea and then a trip to the late-night opening Louvre. It was a cloudy day with some rain but full of highlights just the same. The Louvre was looking fantastic - there's a lot to be said for a late-night opening...

Day two dawned sunnier and shinier and included a special exhibition at the Hôtel de Ville called "Paris - vu par Hollywood". Daughter being such a movie fan we had to go (plus it was free). Posters looked like this:

Then it was a quick nip by the Centre Pompidou, a wander over (and into) Notre-Dame Cathedral, a nosey into Shakespeare and Company bookshop, a coffee break and then another late-night museum trip (this time Musée d'Orsay - and it was just fabulous... photo at the top of this post taken on the top floor there). The Van Gogh room just about took my breath away... certainly made my eyes open that bit wider.

Day three (another sunny one) we took a bus up to Montmartre, partly because I'd never been there before. There were gorgeous views and gorgeous food aplenty, a moody cemetery and, of course, a rather tired looking Moulin Rouge down amongst the sex shops and fancy-seeing-some-breasts-and-bums bars. After that it was bus back to our base, more food and then a walk out by the river and the tower (and they'd switched the twinkling fairy lights on it  by then - very pretty and they can be seen on tiny video here).

Day four we got up and took the train to somewhere further south... but more of that next time.

Save it for your blog, Howard

It's been an odd couple of weeks... quite a few deaths (friends of friends, family of friends, family...) and some changes afoot too. Partly because of that I'm not going to be around here much for the next couple of weeks... but I hope to make contact with you all again before too long. You don't get away that easily.

In the meantime please enjoy some of the first episode of the marvellous comedy series "The Big Bang Theory" (won't embed - go here and today's post title comes in at about 5 minutes 40 seconds... can't believe it started in 2007!). We are watching the show again and introducing it to a new audience. So why is it so good? Because it celebrates intelligence in a world that seems ever stoopider? Possibly. Or does it mock intelligence in a world that is ever brighter? We could debate... though I might not be here to answer much... possibly a good thing...

Bones of the past

Chapel of All Saints, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic, mid '90s (me in huge jacket for some reason!).

So I have travel on my mind once again (though not at as much as this)... and that reminded me of a fairly bizarre holiday some time back in the mid 1990s (sorry, exact dates not a speciality in the 1990s for me... whole years are blurred...). For the holiday in question I went to the Czech Republic with my Mum (who must have been about 70) and, partly because she never went by plane (ever – she suffered high anxiety about all kinds of things... though you wouldn't necessarily know it even if you'd met her), we went on a bus trip. The bus looked like this (it broke down in Germany once or twice...):

Whilst in Prague, we stayed with a "local host" – the man on the far right in the above picture in fact. His wife had left him so he had room. It was a great holiday in many ways – lovely weather and wanderings – and especially good day trips to places like Kutná Hora – home of the famous "bone church" (real name – Sedlec Ossuary) in the first picture. I'm not normally one for churches but this is possibly my favourite one ever. The bone decorations didn't spook me out at all... I just thought they were amazing... but I only seem to have that one photo now (you can see many more here).

Some time after the holiday I wrote a simple little poem about the trip. It's not the kind of piece that's ever going to go on any grand adventures itself (not magazine or competition worthy, I don't think) so I'll put it up here instead. Hope you like it:

 
Prague on the Cheap

 
We drove across kingdoms in a purple bus
with an onboard loo, no mess, less fuss.
We stayed in a house with a lovesick knight
and he cooked us dumplings every night.
We visited art and clocks in squares,
we cruised on the river and bought toy bears,
saw a church decked out with human bones
and were pleased by the lack of mobile phones.
You listened to notes, I stared at rays,
as the sun said good-bye to pleasing days.
We were brave and adventurous, wandering free,
not bad for a pair like you and like me.

 

 
RF 1999 (the poem, not the trip).

Lunan love

Lunan Bay, Angus 2006

I'm busy doing lots of unbloggable things just now... but last night I went to the local folk club and enjoyed a night listening to Scots-Canadian David Francey and that I can tell you about! It was my second time hearing Francey (lots of other folk singers cover his songs too) and it was a lovely night, almost magical in its way. 

The locals did some good work at the folk club too last night so there was some lovely singing and sharing of songs (and here's me been a bit out of love with the song lately –  shocker –  and listening to lots of instrumentals). I read two poems aloud –  the one that's in the current issue of Gutter and also an old love poem that I realise now has never been on-blog called "Free love". It is in my book "More about the song" (old friend now, from 2008) and it was prompted by, amongst other things, a trip Mark and I made to local beauty spot Lunan Bay some years back. Lunan is one of many beautiful local bays and beaches on the Angus coast but it was our nearest giant sandy beach when we first moved up and so we spent a lot of time there back then. This summer I've been back there more again because a new café has opened just by the beach and (a) a friend works there so I pop in to see here (oh and eat cake...) and (b) they've been selling my cards and books too (quite a lot of them too which is nice). There are some details of the café/shop here (though they won't be open for the winter –  closing mid October for the season, I think) and my Lunan (and other things) poem is below. Francey sings a lot about love so let's have a love fest while we can. Any excuse.

Free love

You can keep your twenty grand weddings

With the limos and jazz bands and suits

Give me that day we cycled to Lunan Bay

The hot sun, the empty beach

The lying in a mansize cup of sand in the dunes

The cycling home again the long way round

You can keep the diamond ring in platinum

The weighty jewel from a far-off mine

I'll take a handful of that icing sugar snow

That shines up on a sunny winter morning

Now that's what you can call sparkle

It's hard to find, harder still to keep

I'm sure love is not about the price

The menus or the pantomime

Love is the days when everyone's tired

But still no-one gets the blame

Love lies around the house quietly

Waiting, so quietly, to be needed

RF 2006

Sex, money, sex, money

We've had visitors again recently (in fact a couple of them are still here so I must be quick) and at the weekend we took some of them up the coast to Dunnottar Castle and Stonehaven (all good... sunshine, pipers... total tourist package). On the way there we stopped at Inverbervie and, though we've been past it numerous times, we took our first look at the Cutty Sark figurehead on the edge of this Aberdeenshire village (some info on it here, picture above). The ship's designer, Hercules Linton (what a name!) was born in Inverbervie, hence the connection. Obviously there is a Robert Burns (and hence poetry) connection too (Cutty Sark... Tam o' Shanter etc.). You have to get your poetry connections where you can!

On a very loosely related note I read an interesting interview with Scottish poetry and prose writer Kathleen Jamie in the Scottish Review of Books. It's interesting for many reasons... for what she says about how she forged her career in poetry (well, she has one and how many poets can really say that?), for what she says about younger Scottish women poets (not much really), for what she says about not being able to afford to live in Edinburgh. I have ordered her new prose book "Sightlines" (I loved "Findings" — wrote about it here).

And then to turn to a woman writer (E.L.James) who has made enough money to live in Edinburgh (and in fact by this time possibly enough money to live on Mars if she really wanted), I watched a TV show about the "Fifty Shades of Grey" phenomenon the other day (the show is here for another 7 days, although I think you have to log in to watch it — it's mostly worth it). I haven't read the book yet (before you ask). I'd have to say it's the kind of thing I imagine I might read one night in a B&B when I can't sleep and there's nothing else to read... anywhere. My reasons for not reading it yet are numerous (though I wish the author well enough - she seemed like a fairly nice ordinary woman who got lucky from her appearances on the show). Here are some of those reasons:

1. It started out as "Twilight" fan fiction (so I read) and I watched one "Twilight" movie and thought it was like "Endless Love" with fangs (i.e. for teenagers... and I am not a teenager).

2. I have read in various places that is so badly written it is painful (and OK, some of it might be jealousy but I don't believe all of it is... some of it will be exasperation). And for heaven's sake, I can read my own bad writing if that's what I'm after. To read a good, no nonsense defence of the book by someone who has read it (Laurie Penny on how it is "porn, and porn can be quite fun") go here.

3. I think it was Kathy Lette on the C4 show who described it as "Mills & Boon with butt plugs". If this is accurate then it's definitely not for me. I read one Mills & Boon book (to see what it was like) and that was enough. Some people want their books to be fairly predictable — I like exactly the opposite (same goes for films). Call me awkward! Spank me!

4. If I wanted to read pages and pages describing sexual activity (and I don't — not right now*) I think I could find plenty of other books/websites. And if I was going to read it I certainly wouldn't pick something where she's a virgin at the beginning, gets spanked and tweaked beyond belief (though Laurie Penny in the article I linked to above says there is plenty of more "vanilla" sex in there too) and then (SPOILER) they get married at the end. This obsession with marriage and weddings... it's a sickness I tell you!

So, you see... it's probably not the one for me (though I imagine if I'd been 14 or 15 when it came out I would have, as it very much were, jumped on it).

A couple of other details from the show about the book:

1. Apparently places like Ann Summers (kinky underwear, aforementioned butt plugs etc.) are seeing record sales. There are going to be some very unusual charity shop donations as the months and years pass by, I can tell you. I imagine maybe Dettol may see some market gain soon too. Buy shares now.

2. There was some talk of how one of the greatest taboos (currently) is for a woman to admit that she sometimes wants to be told what to do by a man and that that is why the book is appealing to women so much at the present time. I would say this taboo (which probably does exist to an extent) is one of many problems with people's simplistic responses to feminist/equal opportunity ideas (and by people I do mean men and women). Those of us who've thought about such things know that a good relationship between a man and woman should allow room for variation, development, sharing responsibilities, taking charge and giving it up... most of all making it your own relationship — not the same one as your parents' or your friends' or celebrities' or anybody else. It doesn't really matter whether you're spanking each other or deciding who does the dishes — what matters most is that you sort your relationship in a way that suits the two of you (and really only the two of you). The couple on the show who did practise BDSM were absolutely adorable (with their spreadsheet — suitable choice — of likes and dislikes in the chamber...).

On a mostly unrelated note I'm thinking about attending the walking, writing, ideas festival in Aberdeen next week (much more my scene these days than fisting, I'd have to say) but every person on the panel is male and though I'm interested in hearing them if I'm really honest it does put me off just a little that I would be listening to male experts all day. Was there really no woman writer worth hearing on the subject? Was no-one available? To get to this event I'd have to sort childcare, pay a full entry fee, pay a very expensive train ticket... so I'm afraid an all male panel is the kind of thing that does at least makes me think twice about such an investment (though it wouldn't stop me buying their books and reading them at home, saving some time and money... I don't hate men or anything!). Interestingly Robert Macfarlane (who is featured on at the festival) also appears in the Kathleen Jamie interview I've linked to above. I enjoyed his TV programme a while back but found the recent radio series of his latest book "The Old Ways: a Journey on Foot" a bit... cringey (and now we're back to the Olympic closing ceremony of the last post..).

Anyway... must stop rambling! Must go and see to visitors... make sure child goes to bed... all that stuff.

*I read some porn in my teens, of different kinds... it was useful at first but it is a fairly repetitive genre (and as I've said above, repetition doesn't do it for me... I said "repetition doesn't do it for me"). And as for "erotic" fiction... I've never really seen the point (sorry, erotic fiction writers... I don't like lots of other niche writing genres either, nothing personal!). I just tend to think — isn't sex just part of a story?

Next phase

Trace of angel or catch the pigeon...

Never mind George Michael singing "Freedom", the schools are back here today so I'm feeling a little freer myself all of a sudden (I mean kids are great and everything but, you know, peace and quiet is nice too). And other than that brief mention of George "can I plug my dire new single in the greatest show on earth" Michael I won't say anything more about the Olympics closing ceremony... except to say that all that cringing we didn't have to do for the opening ceremony... well, we got to do it in the end anyway, didn't we? I mean, Take That? On the global stage? Really? Ugh. Recringe.

But there are other things going on...

Peadar O'Donoghue is raising funds for the next Poetry Bus venture so go here and help out if you can. You do get something for your money (mags, books...).

Friendly blogger Solitary Walker is starting a new online writing place. He introduces it here.

Carol Ann Duffy (our poet laureate if you like titles) wrote a poem for the Olympics (read here). I like it but judging from facebook reactions it's about a 50/50 split on yays and neighs (sorry, equestrian effects still hanging about apparently).

Read my first Susan Hill ("The Beacon" 2008). Must say I liked it. Any recommendations for other other books by her?

Hell, I might even write something myself now the schools are back...

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