Culture

After a few days of nothing much, give or take pleasant apéros and meals with friends, we have been out and about a bit.  Last night we were at at a wine bar up on the prom for a folk and blues concert given by Julian Dawson, Dave Kelly and others.  Nice evening, helped along by wine at €10 a bottle.  We had to come home and get some folding chairs, so popular was the event.  All good fun, though I regret the over-amplification that seems to be de rigueur.

Palais des Rois de Majorque, Perpignan

Talking of which, we decided to do some exploring in Perpignan today.  Our visits there have tended to be limited to the airport and suppliers of new chiottes, and as the weather forecast was quite a bit better there, we thought we'd make the trip.  After a modicum of googling and a visit to the tourist office to get a town plan, we went to see the palace of the Kings of Majorca, an impressive 13th/14th century pile built in mixed Romanesque and Gothic styles to the south of the present-day city centre.  It is unfortunately the venue for a heavy metal concert tonight, and we're glad we won't be there.  The beat was discernible if one rested a hand on the medieval stonework.

Basse and Castillet, Perpignan

The cathedral and adjacent burial cloister is worth a look, but the best bit is the bell tower, I'd say.  The cathedral does have a huge Cavaillé-Coll organ up on the north side of the nave.  A bit of googling to a youtube clip will give you a sample of the characteristic blazing reeds and quasi orchestral chorus registrations for which the firm was renowned.  The city has been doing some work on the centre: the sides of the river Basse that joins the Têt in Perpignan have been well landscaped (I'll keep quiet about the rudbeckia envy), and many of the streets, now pedestrianised, are nicely paved.  As you head from the centre out to the palace, however, you pass through some insalubrious areas that we'd neither of us care to visit alone, particularly after dark.

We had a decent lunch at the café-pizzeria La Roma next to the tourist office - but if you ask for a kir/blanc-cassis and don't want it served in a glass with sugar round the rim, remember to specify the fact.  Their escalope de veau Firenze was a regular Schnitzel topped with a slice of jambon cru and grated mozzarella and browned under the grill.  Very appetising -  a sort of 'on-second-thoughts-a-cordon-bleu-would-be-nice' dish, and spoiled a little maybe by the fact that the top layer of crumb was made a bit soggy by the additions.  Very appetising nonetheless.  With frites, natch. 

Back to the village by the direct route (former N9 and N113).  The ladies of the afternoon seem to be back at the roadside, alas, but not in the huge numbers we've seen in earlier years.  It was, however, the first time we'd seen one by the N113 as was.  A move in parliament to criminalise the clients is under way.  (By the way, has anyone got an idea of the costs and benefits of reclassifying so many routes nationales as routes départementales?  There was a time when you could join the N113 in Bordeaux, and take it all the way to Marseille - at vast risk to life and limb, of course.  Now it changes designation every time it crosses a departmental boundary, and of course all the signs and maps have had to be changed.  Everyone still calls it the cent-treize, of course, and its notorious death toll continues.)

Here in the village, we've been treated to a superb concert by the Wolfson Chamber Choir, with a repertoire ranging from Byrd, Tallis and Bach to Duruflé and Rutter, by way of a setting of the 23rd psalm familiar to those who enjoyed Dawn French's performance as the Vicar of Dibley.  The acoustic of the church is very difficult.  But Natalie Mayer-Hutchings's rendering of the Pie Jesu from Fauré's Requiem was as moving as I've heard: she can do close to a boy-treble voice, only with a shade more power.  And I'd forgotten the handkerchief.  Elsewhere in the village, a brass band was giving it big licks in the market square where a wedding party held its apéritif session from about 17:30 to 21:30.  They then processed through the village, doubtless for a hearty blowout at the  salle polyvalente.  At the time of writing, they are out of earshot...

The bouquet of the day goes to the wonderful Wolfson Chamber Choir.  The cactus of the day goes to the twat in the elderly BMW who passed us and the car in front close to a right-hand bend near the Château d'Aguilar.