It's gone quiet

Sad to be at the end of a superb piano festival.  It has been an intimate and enjoyable experience: one has the chance to bump into and chat with the performers at the market, the baker's or in the river, and it's clear that many of the performers are great friends with each other.  The last day was a treat: a terrific soprano recital by Marta Garcia Cadena and Jordi Humet in the difficult acoustic of the church.  Marta has a lovely natural voice, which a lot of us felt ideally suited to Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne, which in my view works less well for a virtuoso operatic soprano.  Guillaume Sigier's afternoon piano recital was a touch mixed.  I suppose once you've listened to Ravel's Miroirs a few times the arguments will become clearer.  The Haydn and Brahms pieces were more acceptable, and the phrasing was restrained, making for a more coherent performance than some we've heard.

It was during Guillaume's recital that the problems of an open air event became clear: uncontrolled kids running around and shouting.  Mr Artistic Director had a go at shushing them, as did some of the Grandma figures of the village.  Eventually, with a muttered 'I'm not having this', I marched off to deal with them, to a murmuring, I gather, of 'there goes trouble!' from behind us.  Putting on my best dealing-with-contempt-of-court attitude, I went and collared them, quietly advising them to go home and not return, understood?  The unspoken (and of course undeliverable) 'or else' appears to have worked.

The evening recital was troubled another familiar Lagrasse factor: strong wind.  Bobby Mitchell, a virtuoso performer of Gershwin and others earlier in the week, was doing the page turning for Janneke and James (see earlier post), and his great mop of hair was all over the place.  They began with a performance of Holst's The Planets, and Janneke told me next day that they were getting really stressed when the wind kept whipping the music away.  It didn't show: it practically brought the house down - or the Halle, anyway.  In the second half, they played a few of my favourite Gershwin pieces, and finished with Debussy's La Mer, which was very well received.  I was on hat duty again, and got my best takings of the week - well over 100€.  Perhaps people were doing as I did last year and giving at the end rather than per concert, and I had fewer people proferring a tenner and asking for a fiver back. 

I think it was a mistake to make such a secret that we'd be putting the hat round.  People are free to contribute or not as they please, but an apologetic suggestion, made only at the beginning of the series, that five or ten Euros in the hat would be nice was simply not enough.  I gather that this, and the whole question of merchandising and publicity, was controversial among the organisers.  Still, the T-shirts, brooches, coasters etc sold pretty well: the logo is simple and clear.  A good decision by the En Blanc et Noir team was to publish the programme in French only, even if the original English shone through a little here and there.

I took Janneke to the airport yesterday (her husband, James, had already left for another engagement near Albi).  Some interesting insights: she told me that James's piano teacher also teaches at the girls' school where Holst taught, and just happened upon the composer's manuscript for the four-hands arrangement when he was clearing out a cupboard!  She told me she was hoping to be listed earlier in next year's programme, since it's a bit stressful keeping the big performance for the end.  I told her it was far too late for that: having finished this year's series with a blazing performance - and last year's too with the Rite of Spring - her audience looks forward to her and her man for the finale!

It all seems terribly quiet now, and I'm already missing our lovely musicians.  Still, there's to be a chamber music series in September, and we'll be here for some of it.  It is being arranged by the village organist, and I think it's a healthy competitive response to 'our' somewhat anglophone dominated series, and it's a little more hard-nosed, in that admission to concerts will be by ticket, and prices are hefty.  I don't suppose I'll see the books for either event, but dare say I'll hear on the grapevine how they compared! 

Station run

Since I have no artistic contribution to make to https://www.facebook.com/En.Blanc.Et.Noir.Lagrasse, we're doing minimal B&B, and a couple of station/airport runs for musicians.  Today I took young Paul Salinier and his parents to the station.  Paul played in the opening concert, and impressed us.  Just 17, he is preparing for the concours for the Paris Conservatoire next February, and if the assessors' reaction is similar to the audience's, he'll walk it.  Thoroughly likeable young fellow, too.  Like so many of the performers we've seen here, his is a name to watch.

I got back, via the shopping, just in time to hear Janneke Brits and James Kreiling playing Rachmaninov and Scriabin respectively.  Virtuoso performances both, but though we liked the early Scriabin pieces, my mind wandered in the later ones.  (A bit like my thoughts on Kandinsky, really, mutatis mutandis.)  Martyn, meanwhile, voted with his feet.  Some more accessible stuff in today's early evening concert.

Odd experience, driving home solo from Carcassonne: it has to be nine years since I last did it, back in the days when Martyn was coming here briefly when he could get respite from looking after Ma-in-law.  I felt strangely insecure.  Maybe I've become used to his moderating influence, and in its absence tackle the bends with a bit too much gusto.  The road is up in Monze, and despite temporary traffic lights, I had to reverse a couple of hundred yards to make way for a  mobile crane with several concrete reinforcing matrices dangling precariously from its jib.  Elf & Syfety are scarce commodities in these parts.

*** Vaut le voyage

Simone Tavoni at the Steinway

The piano festival has started, and five recitals in, the place is buzzing with excitement.  The standard is once again very high so far, and the audiences are enthusiastic and appreciative.  T-shirts are selling well, we're glad to report, and when the hat comes round, it seems to be well filled.  Since we are modest sponsors of the event, we were invited to a splendid paëlla lunch yesterday with fellow sponsors and some of the musicians.  We took some amuse-bouche, which seem to have gone down well: well, they went, at least. We hosted one of the pianists overnight.  Regulars will recall my enthusing about one Yshani Perinpanayagam this time last year (and if not, why not?).  She it was who was our overnight guest, and what a delightful young woman she is.  Excellent company, and the perfect house guest.  She accompanied Johnny Herford in a recital in the church today, and we had the added pleasure of his company as well last night for a simple supper (which, I'm glad to report, doesn't seem to have poisoned either of them).  Well, their performances today were of the highest quality imaginable, anywhere.  The fact that they pulled it off so well in the difficult acoustic of our village church speaks volumes for their professionalism.  Their programme: Schubert, Richard Strauss, Wolf, Butterworth and Britten was long and challenging, but they both shone, and seemed to enjoy themselves as much as the audience did.  Johnny's (baritone) voice is superb.  He has an impressive range, and sings with natural ease in all registers and power levels.  This performance alone was worth the journey.  And when Johnny gets his knighthood, we'll be able to say he came to supper with us in Lagrasse!

Parties and leftovers

Raspberry sponge gâteau by chef-patissier Bishop

I always look forward to having a crowd round, but never quite remember how stressful it gets as the hour approaches.  We got much of the preparation done well in advance, and our fears of over-catering were largely ill-founded.  Not much left of the 36 burgers, 32 drumsticks, a couple of packets of Speldhurst sausages, a large dish of sag aloo and - of course, a six-can batch of Ms Jaffrey's 'very spicy delicious chick peas', without which no party of ours is complete.  Martyn had made a stupendous range of puddings, including a handsome gâteau.  After days of contradictory weather forecasts and heavy rain in the morning, the sun was shining by the time guests started to arrive, and by mid-afternoon one family was sitting comfortably on the grass.  My birthday treat next day was a ride to the tip with the paper plates, napkins and scraps.

Leftover drumsticks and chickpeas, along with some veg knocking about in the bottom of the fridge, did for a couscous royal last night, and Martyn has liquidized and frozen the remaining fruit salad.  So we're just about ready for the summer migration south, hoping that the tunnel is working correctly tomorrow.  We've booked our Usual Flophouse in the Auvergne for a night.  I'd planned to use another nearby, but found when I looked this morning that is fully booked.  Still, booking late at the normal place got us a fat discount.  Just hope we don't get a noisy Italian family next door again. 

Mr B contemplates the port of Dieppe

[Later]  Well, as it turned out, the uncertainty over services through the tunnel prompted us to forfeit the non-ref tunnel bookings and re-book, at rather greater cost, via Newhaven-Dieppe.  I didn't feel like adding insult to injury by forfeiting the non-ref hotel booking, so it meant that we didn't get there until 21:30, some 14 hours after leaving home (though less than seven hours' driving, cf. over eight from Calais).  I wonder at the awful driving on the French motorways.  At one point I had moved out to pass a couple of lorries that were lumbering uphill, whereas we were doing the legal 130, adjusted up for speedo error.  Some twat in an Audi hurtled up behind us doing a good 170, overtook us on the right, then swung in front of us to pass the second truck with inches to spare.  By time we got to Issoire, tea was all we wanted, even with HIV milk from a motorway aire, and it's always good to know that we've broken the back of the journey.  The going between Dieppe and Chartres is SLOW, however, and lousy with roadworks.  Having slept typically badly the night before, we got a pretty fair night's sleep at the air-conditioned UF in the A.  Just as well.  It is hot here, and temperatures are unlikely to drop below 22° tonight.

Today's journey reminded us once again of the utter loveliness of the A75 route through the Auvergne and the Causses.  Huge panoramas, puffs and skeins of cloud hanging beneath us in the valleys - all slightly spoiled by a detour in consequence of the farmers blockading the motorway north of Brioude, and emptying crates of peaches across the slip road.  Martyn's unequalled navigating skills got us back on to the motorway at a familiar junction not too much further on, whereupon we had a good fast run for thirty miles or so, no doubt while others followed the signposted diversions.  Thus fortified, I suggested we take the Béziers ring road and come home via Capestang and Lézignan, rather than take the Kamikaze training ground known as the A9.  Well, thanks to the unparallelled incompetence of my navigating, we came off the Beezers-Carcassonne road too soon.  That ought not to have been dire, had not the villages been awash with routes barrées.  Having taken mental stock of the contents of the cool box, and with only a brief pause to get a baguette and some butter in the village, we got home in just decent time for a lunch of leftovers, and shopped later.

Part of the shopping derives from my rash offer to do canapés for 50 at next Sunday's lunch for sponsors of the piano bash.  We're hosting one of the pianists for a night, and I'm doing a couple of airport/station runs with performers and families next week.  Meanwhile, we're looking forward to several days of fine music.  Watch this space.

And at the third attempt......

...we finally made it for our day booze cruise to France yesterday.  We first tried to go nearly three weeks ago, but were discouraged by the check-in clerk because of the risk of more disruption later in the day at the port of Calais by strikers burning tyres at the entrances to the ferry port.  (They were protesting at the forced divestiture of Eurotunnel's ferry company and probable consequent redundancies.)  We re-booked for one day last week, but at the end of the lengthy booking process, the woman at the call centre said the risk was still high.  She advised us to let the booking stand, and if need be re-book using the same reservation number once the smoke had cleared.  Martyn re-booked for yesterday - another lengthy and bug-ridden booking process.

On the depressingly frequent occasions when ferry workers, trawlermen, fishmongers' aunties or whoever are blockading the port of Calais, the build up of lorries on the M20 means that stretches have to be closed between two and five junctions, and other traffic diverted to the old A20, a process known as Operation Stack.  Having heard that it had been cleared by Monday, off we went.  The side of the motorway is still decorated at intervals with portable privies (though the intervals at which they are set suggest that they'll actually be used for one visit in a hundred at best).  Further towards Dover, trucks and cars were segregated into the left and right-hand lanes respectively, and for much of the hill down into Dover, the left lane was solid with stationary lorries.  We breezed past and straight into the port, did passport checks, and rolled up to the check-in.  'Ah yes', sez the clerk, 'I see there's an extra £130 to pay'.  'No there isn't!' and we explained the whole sorry tale of wasted journeys and ages spent on the telephone.  Closes window, calls supervisor.  'OK, nothing extra to pay'.  Good start, blood pressure up.  I then got us lost on the way to our designated lane, and had to do sundry loops and U-turns to get us back on course.

We were booked on the Pride of Burgundy, which we think is the oldest vessel in the P&O fleet, and it shows.  Grubby saloons, manky carpets, smelly lavvies.  Just like the old British Railways boats in the 1970s - nostalgic, really!  Still, at 28'000 tons, it's rather more comfortable than the 3-4'000 tonners of those days, and had we not seen the white caps (barely, through the filthy windows) we'd hardly have known we were on the water.  The grubby, crumbling window seals and flaking rusty metalwork on the outside window frames hardly inspired confidence, however, and on the way back, our tables and chairs were only notionally connected to the fabric of the vessel.  It got us there and in due course back, however.  School examinations over, there's an interval of a few weeks until end of term.  So what do they do with the sprogs?  Yep: day trips to France.  Enough said: the crossings were not restful.

The purpose of the trip was to get some fizz etc for a forthcoming event, and that part of it was fine.  We had a pretty decent and inexpensive lunch in a Crocodile restaurant next to the Auchan in Dunkirk, and the vast shed provided us with all we were looking for.  (I appear, however, in my haste to get out, to have picked up a 12-pack of pink, peach-flavoured beer.  Much ribaldry will doubtless ensue.)

Pleasant amble back on departmental roads via Gravelines and Grand-Fort-Philippe.  I'd only really associated Gravelines with the complex of six nuclear power plants on the coast, the largest such installation in western Europe - and with a moderately unsuccessful basketball team.  But the twin towns of Gravelines and GFP boast a rather fine Vauban fortress, and they appear to be vying for a ville fleurie award: the plantings are really rather good, even running to a scattering of deliberately sown wild flowers by the roadsides outside town.  It was low tide, so the estuary of the Aa was not at its most charming, but it's clearly a mecca for small boaters.

Well, after that nice interlude, we clanked back to Calais, topped up the tank with a modicum of diesel, and then ran the gauntlet of a double row of tall, razor wire-topped fences installed (at UK expense, I think) to cut the numbers of refugees etc getting to UK on lorries.  Rolled up to check-in.  'Ah yes', sez the clerk, 'I see there's an extra £130 to pay'.  'No there isn't!' and we explained, yet again.  Closes window, calls supervisor.  'OK, nothing extra to pay.  Would you like to leave on an earlier ferry?'  'Yes, please.'  'Oh, sorry: you're too late.'  Well, we sat in the queue for a good half hour watching said earlier ferry doing the square root of bugger-all, then in due course rumbled on to the bad old Pride of Burgundy for the sail back.  Once the sprogs had finished their copiously vinegared fish and chips and pushed off elsewhere, it was quite pleasant sitting looking out over the sharp end and wondering whether we'd be attempting to get through between two towering container ships, or swinging round a bit to pass behind the second.  Latter, alas!  The car, meanwhile, was out on deck at the blunt end, acquiring a layer of salt spray.

Uneventful ride home, thank goodness, although by then, the lorry queue stretched back from Dover to the Channel tunnel entrance, some twelve miles distant.  The stretch of motorway before the segregated section was chaos.  Glad we were pointing west.  Well, what do we learn?  Forget the ferries, or certainly the older P&O ferries.  The tunnel experience is gravely boring, but you can at least read a book or take a nap, and it's over quickly.  The ferries are a fine example of Sartre's much-misinterpreted line, l'enfer, c'est les autres, and they take too long.  The Channel tunnel process is pretty slick and rapid, whereas the port of Dover is incredibly complicated, and is forever being tinkered with to adapt to the ever-changing passport and security regulations.  There must be people in the port administration who'd like to dynamite the lot and start again.  Same's probably true of Heathrow, come to think of it, but in the interests of getting this published this year, I'll park that thought pro tem.

It's only money...

It's the time of year when the car sets one back a bit.  The annual inspection follows hard on the insurance renewal.  The good news is that the former is typically discounted by companies that want to sell you tyres etc, and that the insurance market seems to have become very competitive.  It didn't help that I decided to replace the last of the original tyres today, but there again, the price hasn't increased since the last two I did a few years ago, and today's had done nearly 47'000 miles!  Nervous moment on the way home, when the tyre pressure warning light came on.  Pulled over, slapped on the hazard warning lights, kicked tyres (they did not flinch), got back in, reset warning, drove home without recurrence.  Yet.  We had a similar false alarm last year in torrential rain between Paris and Orléans, and assumed then that the surface water had interfered with the sensors.  The tyre fitting involved a large amount of glop on the rims, so maybe some has found its way to the sensors.  We'll see.

The trouble with booking a car-fettling appointment in the industrial estate is that there's damn-all to do other than visit the big retail sheds.  So we came home with a fettled car, groceries from M&S, kitchen gadgets from a purveyor thereof and eight new dinner plates.

JP1

Martyn mentioned just now that he'd never seen so many blooms on one rose bush.  I'm inclined to agree: this is the Justice of the Peace rose we bought from the hobby club, which had commissioned it from Fryers' Roses, in time for 2011, the 650th anniversary of the Magistracy.  It has been a prolific bloomer since its first year.  We bought another a couple of years ago, with a view to giving one to a former colleague who takes part in the National Gardens Scheme.  I don't know how hers is doing, but ours is coming along nicely:

JP2

I can't image that the epithet of choice of my clients as they leave is 'blooming JP', but it would be nice to imagine that it isn't too far away.