Paris Day Two - Montmartre

I need to crack on writing up my trip to Paris and other points south because the date for our next trip away is fast approaching and I'm falling behind. 

Fair warning; this is going to be a very picture heavy post. I always take loads of photographs and then have trouble deciding which ones to use,

Day two I spent in Montmartre; my friend lives about a ten minute walk from Scare Coeur, and I was wanting to spend some time in the area just wandering about and soaking up the atmosphere as well as visiting the Musee de Montmartre which I'd read was excellent. 

I didn't particularly want to go into Sacre Coeur so I didn't; I probably wouldn't have even had I wanted too because the whole area was full of tourists so I can only imagine what the inside of the church must have been like, but I took some pictures.

then using my sometimes trusty phone directions I set off in the direction of the Musee de Montmartre. It's set in a house that was used by various C19 painters as a home or studio or both, and it's beautiful. It has glorious gardens front and back, - and a lovely cafe (always a plus)  

The main exhibition is a history of the area and how it transformed from being a rural landscape dotted with windmills to a rather louche area of Paris full of nightclubs and witnessing the birth of the can-can. In one of the buildings they have reconstructed the studio of the painter Suzanne Valadon

The exit was through the gift shop, naturally, but there'll be another, dedicated,  post about the very few things I bought as souvenirs of my trip later.

After the museum I had a wander around and ended up at the cemetery; in an experience that would be repeated at a later visit to Pere Lachaise I found none of the graves of the famous people I was looking for, but that was OK (ish) because I quite enjoy walking around cemeteries regardless. 

And that was Day 2. 

 

St Magnus Festival - A Rave

 

I am delighted to be able to say how very very much I enjoyed the Scottish Ballet performances given as part of the St Magnus Festival. We kicked off with A Streetcar Named Desire and as it is, to quote a review 'narrative ballet at its very best' it didn't matter that I realised very quickly that although I thought I knew the story, I actually didn't. I cannot add anything to the rave reviews this production has had wherever it has been performed, I can only say that I found it transfixing and the end moved me almost to tears. Truly spectacular (although obviously, given its subject matter, very disturbing at the same time!) 

The OH did not really enjoy it as he thought it 'too obvious'. He much preferred the more schools oriented program the following day which had two very short modern pieces, Tether and Trifecta. I loved Trifecta although I thought the young man who danced in it a little tentative. The rest of the program was excerpts from The Nutcracker, including the dance of the Sugar Plum fairy. I saw a documentary a couple of years ago about putting on The Nutcracker which majored on how difficult the SP role is. This probably accounted for the fact that I noticed how very tired the young dancer here  got towards the end, but even dancers are human and it was all very enjoyable. 

If I had to got to one of them again though it would be Streetcar, no question. 

Special Socks (1)

I know, it's been a while - sorry. There was a reason which will feature here eventually. Meanwhile here are some pictures of a very special sock.

side view

front

back

Aha, I hear you ask, apart from looking too faffy for anyone sensible to undertake. especially on an item that most people never see even when you are wearing it, what is special about this sock? 

I'm glad you asked. It's a sample. Since someone on Facebook was confused about what a sample knit  was, and why anyone would want one, it's an item knitted up in a dyer's yarn that they can take to shows, and photograph for their social media accounts/website, to show off what can be done with their yarn and what it looks like when it's knitted up. (or crocheted).

Helen, the dyer of  Giddy Yarns recently set up  a list of people willing to knit sample items for her, and I joined it. It's not something I would have done until quite recently because I never think my knitting is of a high enough standard to do that sort of thing, but she wanted people who would knit socks, and honestly if I can't knit an up-to-standard sock by now I should give up knitting them altogether. So I stepped forward and when she sent out a list of patterns she wanted sampling I chose three I thought I could do, and of the three she asked me to do this one. 

For the record, the pattern is called Frodo, it's from a collection of nine sock patterns called The Fellowship of the Socks and I have been half intending to knit them all 'one day' for myself anyway. So this seemed like a good opportunity to test one of them out. 

I said I would do Frodo because it was a cable pattern and as we all know I think of myself as a cable, rather than a lace, knitter. Imagine my surprise/horror when the pattern arrived and not only did it have some nice complex cabling up the front but a lace panel on the back. In the event I quite liked the effect of the lace panel and it wasn't too complicated but I certainly hadn't been expecting it! 

I'm really pleased I had the chance to try this out before doing it for myself because when I do I will make the foot longer and the toe correspondingly shorter, as I think the toe as written is far too long and pointy, and I will knit the toe in stocking stitch. Because taking the pattern to the toe seems a bit OTT to me. 

The St Magnus Festival - A Rant.

Just to break up the Paris Parade slightly I'm going to write a few words about the St Magnus Festival. Normally, as long term readers will know, we avoid this, and I've always said that that is because it majors on orchestral music and we're not really fans of that. If you want us to listen to something then stick a human voice in it. I say this not with pride or shame but simply record it as a fact. 

This year however we decided to stick, not so much a toe as half a foot, into the water, largely because Scottish Ballet are here doing two performances and we wanted to go to those. There was a poetry book launch by a Scot Lit person I met in Prague at the Conference last year so I thought I would go along to that and a friend was singing in the Festival Chorus at a concert where the program included the Faure Requiem, which to my mind is always worth a listen. 

The ballet is Thursday and Friday so I can't report on that but the book launch and the concert are now over so I can write about those. 

I should say that my equilibrium has been massively disturbed over the last week and a half by the antics of the decorator we have had in the house. Since he was combining at least two and possibly three jobs and rarely saw fit to tell us when he would be at which job, and when he did come here often turned up at least an hour before we would normally be out of bed, jangling nerves and lack of sleep were really not in it.  I freely admit I am not the world's best at living with uncertainty in any shape or form, and I may therefore be taking a slightly too jaundiced view of festival proceedings as a result. Or I may not. 

Both the book launch and the concert were prime examples of the other reason we never go to the Festival and that's the people who do. Not the visitors, but some of the local luminaries who are involved in organising, introducing, and being commissioned to take part. One of the major problems in the Orkney Arts scene is that many people who are big fish in the tiny pond of Orkney Arts actually consider they are big fish in a much larger pool and as a result they are smug, self satisfied and self congratulatory. All traits which, to be frank,  irritate the hell out of me

A prime example was the concert. In between the musical pieces, some of which were lovely and some of which - well, just weren't - we were subjected to a recording of crashing waves and poems written and read by two local practitioners of the craft. The wave thing was just crass and unnecessary. The poems were unoriginal, laboured and   banal in the extreme. About Orkney, and so obvious in their subject matter; the sea, the tides, the history, the stone, the circle of life. People, I'm not saying that no-one will ever do that better than George Mackay Brown, but I am saying that if you can't do it better, which on this evidence you certainly can't, then don't do it at all. Practice your craft on some other topic, or - heaven forfend - try and find something original to say about the place. 

Reverting to the decorating it is now all done ( well, it is if you allow for the fact that we reduced the original job from three rooms to two)  and done well. Here is the back hall, in a tasteful shade of Wedgewood blue . It will never be quite this tidy again so I shall enjoy it while it lasts. 

Paris Day One

 As previously mentioned I was staying with a friend, who very handily lives in Montmartre. She didn't have quite as much free time as she had hoped which meant I did a lot of stuff on my own, and although I was a bit daunted by the prospect of coping with such a large and unfamiliar city, mostly on foot, it was quite an exciting thought as well. And overall I managed quite well -  much aided by the fact that my phone could give me directions; a boon, since  my map reading skills are, shall we say, limited. 

I'd ordered a new Paris Guide Book ages before I went, had read it cover to cover, and pinpointed four things that I wanted to see or do. I wasn't there for very long and I didn't want to go dashing about ticking things off and not actually savouring the experience of each one, so I tried to set achievable goals. Accordingly, on my first morning I set off for Ile de la Cite. It was a longish but pleasant walk; I stopped on the way for coffee

I asked if they had 'quelque chose avec des framboises', and lo! they did. It was as delicious as it looks. 

I passed but didn't go in to Saint Eustache

and then took some 'obvious' shots as I crossed the bridge to Ile de la Cite

First on my visiting list was Sainte Chappelle. When I was last in Paris,  hardly anyone had heard of it. It was 1974, I was on an immersive pre A-level french speaking course in Versailles and we had an afternoon off so most of us went into Paris. A teacher had told us about the glories of Sainte Chappelle and three of us went to see it. I remember it as a place of great beauty, silence and calm, with the three of us and hardly anyone else there. I'd hoped it was the same. It wasn't. I don't know if it has just become more widely known, or whether it's taking the flow of tourists who would normally go to Notre Dame but it was packed. packed and noisy, and annoyingly the first thing you see as you enter is the shop. I've nothing against churches having shops, but I do think placing them at the front entrance is a bit much. 

It wasn't the oasis of clam and contemplation I had hoped for but it is still beautiful in that slightly OTT Gothic way. 

It was the ceiling that I had retained the strongest memories of and it's still glorious. And depsite my grumbles about the noise and the crowds I spent quite some time here. 

Lunch was next after which my friend and I had made tentative plans to meet at the second place on my list,  the Musee Cluny. She was delayed (it became a bit of a refrain for the week) but I was happy to do it on my own. I went mainly for the Lady and Unicorn tapestries which I've wanted to see for years, but there was lots of other stuff I was more than happy to look at - including some stupendous, if less well known tapestries.  It was a lovely afternoon, in a beautiful building - and they have a very nice cafe too. 

The day was rounded off by meeting up with my friend and her supervisor - we went and had ice cream, peach and verbena in my case - delicious - then a return visit to the restaurant from the previous evening where we ordered and this time actually got, some frites. And my friend was right, they were delicious. 

It was a fabulous day!

Books to Read poster No 50

 Yay, finally and at last! - we're half way through. 

And no. 50, acquired as a free Audible classic has this picture on the poster 

and although, looking at that it could be Gilbert White's The Natural History of Selborne it is in fact A Wind in the Willows

And yes, I read it as a child, and I also took part in a school production of Toad of Toad Hall but neither of those things prepared me for what an odd book this is. 

It's disjointed. In fact there is such a lack of  narrative coherence that I had to check several times to ensure I wasn't listening to a (very badly) abridged edition.  It's very unclear who the projected audience is.; children wouldn't understand half the references or indeed be particularly exercised over several of Grahame's obsessions, but grown ups presumably wouldn't like the whimsy of talking animals and would find the many jolts and inconsistencies in the plot jarring.  It's part paean of praise for Edwardian clubland, part evocation of a lost pagan world or a vaguely described afterlife , and naturally enough given the time it was written  none of the major protagonists are female. 

I can't imagine how it came to be published, and a little bit of Googling tells me that it was in fact  rejected by numerous publishers before being brought out in 1908 by Methuen to negative reviews. Not just me then! 

Sewing Again

 

I haven't had a sewing lesson for a few weeks as first the teacher was away and then I was. However it was back to normal yesterday for three weeks, after which she is off on maternity leave.

I made a lined sunglasses case which involved sewing through lots of layers at once, and around curves. It took a while .... but I'm quite pleased with the result. 

Short one today as we are off our for the day shortly - a dress rehearsal for spending the day with friends off a cruise liner later in the month,. We need timings, and we need a wet weather plan - although today is so lovely that I have looked out a sunhat. 

I wish I had a longer name

because then I could have called my Paris posts something like 'Emily in Paris' but with my name instead of Emily's. I hasten to add I have never actually seen Emily in Paris but the title is stuck in my mind. A one syllable name like Anne somehow just doesn't cut it. But there you go. My parents lumbered me with Anne, and I've just had to put up with it all my life.

It was a l-o-n-g time since I had travelled any distance on my own, due partly to Covid and partly to my vision problems, so I was a bit trepidatious about this. I booked with a budget airline and because if I had wanted to put a suitcase in the hold, I would have paid more for my clothes to go to Paris than I would have paid for me, I opted for hand baggage only, and even bought a new cabin bag for the purpose. I am still undecided as to whether this was a good move or not. It meant that it wasn't heavy, which was a boon, but it also meant a lot of uncomfortable shuffling with a handbag inside another tote to go under the seat and constant fretting about what was where. 

I should also say at this point that despite what I thought was minimal packing I took too much stuff, but this was partly down to the weather which was warm and sunny and meant I really didn't need the new lime green jumper I had treated myself to in M & S. Live and learn. 

I have been revising my French thanks to the little green owl of Duolingo, although I'm not sure that, despite my 159 day streak I have actually got past anything I learned in school, but at least it gave me the confidence to try and I'm happy to report that I generally did speak French with ticket sellers, waiters etc and even more pleased tor report that they understood what I said. I occasionally didn't catch what they said back, which was usually numbers because I was buying things, and naturally enough they are a lot quicker at rattling off French numbers than I am. but you know, generally it was heartening. 

My first challenge was getting a train ticket to get me from Charles de Gaulle into central Paris and I managed that no bother. The friend I was staying with met me at the Gare du Nord and we went back to her flat where I dumped my bag, had a very much needed cold drink and we talked a lot, before setting off for the Sorbonne where we were attending a concert. On which topic I don't ever want to go to a solo clarinet concert specialising in modern music ever again. 

Part of the Sorbonne

After that I was taken to what seemed to me a very Parisian bar/bistro thing where we ate. We ordered frites, since my friend told me they served some of the best in Paris, but somehow they never arrived. Good omelette though. 

And then we walked back to the flat, which was in Montmartre, and that was the end of Day 1. 

Some Finished Stuff

Before I start on several days worth of Paris related blog posts I thought I'd put some craft projects on record.

Firstly I did get this finished eventually

a couple of months behind schedule sadly, which has thrown off my cross stitch plans for the year, but I'm not beating myself up too much because I've done two other small cross stitch projects that weren't in the plan but are now done,  and more to the point were used; for my project bag and my friend's card respectively. So that's a win. 

Then there were some socks for the OH. The yarn was part of Laura The Lonely Knitter's Dr Who Collection. The colour is called 'I'm burning up a planet just to say goodbye'. pattern Hermione's Everyday Socks. 

And finally not really a 'craft' project but a jigsaw, The World of the Brontës. I purchased this in Inverness recently. I havered as  readers will know that my opinion of the Brontës, as people and writers, is quite low, but it was such a lovely picture that in the end I couldn't resist. 

Very enjoyable to do, and definitely a keeper. 

Afternoon Tea at Gleneagles - Reprise

It had occurred to me that however enjoyable the Glasgow weekend was going to be - and it was - that I was also going to find it a tad stressful, so I had suggested to the OH that it might be a ice idea to go back to Gleneagles for afternoon tea the day the others all went home and relax. He put up no resistance to this at all, and in fact booked it very quickly, presumably so that I didn't change my mind. 

It's been a few years since our one and only other visit and things had changed slightly since then; not in any particularly material way though. The service was still fabulous, the food was still lovely and the music was still, sadly, a soft jazz. Sorry to all those jazz lovers out there, but it's never floated our boat. Mileage varies, as they say, and I know some people don't like opera, which is fine. Each to their own.

The tea this summer is Beatrix Potter themed ( BP spent a lot of holidays in Perthshire apparently, which solves the mystery of why there is a BP exhibition in nearby Dunkeld I suppose).The menus were in keeping,

as was the lounge centrepiece

we each had a 'savoury stand'

and there was a shared sweet one

and yes those brown things on the lowest plate  are chocolate scones, and yes, I was extremely doubtful, and yes, they were delicious. 

As previously, what we didn't eat at the time was popped in a box for us automatically. 

After we'd finished, and since it was a warm sunny  day  we went for a stroll in the gardens which are beautifully kept

And just because all this wasn't enough excitement for one month, the next day the OH dropped me at Glasgow airport to catch a flight to Paris! 

Glasgow Weekend Day 2

 Continuing with the Charles Rennie Mackintosh theme we spent most of Sunday at the House for an Art Lover. This was a design by CRM which he entered for an architectural competition in Germany. A technical irregularity (some of his interior sketches were late)  meant that it wasn't able to win and the house was never built - until 1989 when it was constructed in Bellahouston Park in Glasgow. It houses an exhibition of some of the work of CRM and his wife Margaret MacDonald, a cafe, a shop, an exhibition studio, several workspaces for artists and is also used as a venue for hire. It would be the most amazing place to get married! There's also a walled garden and an art trail in the grounds. 

We started off with coffee in the cafe, where the manageress very kindly took this picture of us all ( a rare blog sighting there of the OH ) 

and then we toured the house. If you like Mackintosh there are probably much better pictures of HfaAL on line; for some of the time my lens was grubby which spoiled many of my pictures, but for what they're worth, here are a few 

I would love to live in a Mackintosh/MacDonald designed house, although I'm not sure where you would keep all your stuff! Lunch was followed by a walk in the grounds 

after which we rather over ambitiously took ourselves off to the newly re-opened Burrell Collection. We were all so tired that all we managed there really was a desultory look at part of the ground floor and a cup of tea and a bun. One for a revisit I think.