The Long Awaited Visit to Duras August 2018

  

PetenRuth and I lost touch after Eric and I split up; at that that time I went, without thinking, with the convention of friends staying with original friends, but this year I visited them in Duras, and it was just like it was back in the day in Blackburn, and Ruth still had the Love Your Weeds book that I gave her back in the 70s. And it was down to Daisy raving about staying with them, and then being in contact on social media, and also my facing up to my fear of flying, that made it possible. [In which I didn't so much lose my fear of flying, but rationalised my fear of death for someone whose youngest children are no longer helpless babies, but young adults in their twenties.] PetenRuth and I did briefly meet in Leeds, but not in any meaningful way. Staying for a week in France was the key. 

Sunday evening/Monday morning train to London, Travelodge on Kings Cross Road, drink in the Northumberland and then another in the Lodge. Gatwick train from St Pancras, three hours early for flight. flight is two hours late. Sit next to Mrs Trivial on the plane. Earphones is the key here. I didn't want to know about her babyminding her grandkids; I dont even want to contemplate minding my own.

art and architecture everywhere in Toulouse

Toulouse

The tram to the Palais du Justice is so easy. I get off at the river and found my street Avenue de Garonnette. 

Settle in, go out for provisions. Overdose on bread, Camembert and cherry tomatoes, only manage one can of beer.

Marmande Station

Tuesday: Wake too early, eat, take a turn around the bridges: Pont Neuf and Pont St Pierre. Have now added two cans of beer to already too heavy luggage. The Garonne. Awesome. To the Gare Toulouse Matabiau via la Place de Capitole [full of armed police/army officers - but scary], finally on the Bordeaux train to disembark at Marmande. 

Here’s Ruth, ear clamped to phone, as it happens. Well sometimes it just happens, and anyway, Ruth has an open-topped car. Oh bliss! Ruth is trying to organise something, and I end up speaking in French to her friend on her [Ruth's] phone. Confused! We all were. 

yes lizard there

It’s only been a decade, or two. Or four. And here’s the swimming pool. Ecstasy. Selfies with lizard and hen. 

Tache

Hannah [Pete's daughter] and her partner, Pete 

[just for confusion!] 

band in Monsegur

are also visiting. I havent seen Hannah since she was three! And PetenRuth have three dogs, which is the absence of my own cats, I am strangely bonding with. The house is a converted barn which they designed themselves, including a giant four glass-door entrance onto a half-covered patio. 

Obviously I should have realised that the doors are not always open as I walk into one of them carrying two cups of tea. Later on I asked Ruth to react this mini-disaster [without any loss of tea or dribbling on windows]. 

Choosing pictures

Wednesday: French Bank Holiday and official end of the summer hols. At lunchtime we take pizza in the beautiful square in Duras, look at some old and vintage cars and bikes including (Oh sigh, oh memories!) two 2 CVs. Buy awesome duck butter dish and a linen nightie. Pose by the cars, pose with  linen nightware.

Looking at this lovely old motorbike I notice two notices written on it in Russian and offer to take away a photo of them to translate them later. Then this woman appears and translates them at the spot. Thanks.

Find a toad in the business end of the swimming pool. It's Hannah who opines that s/he may not be happy stuck there, so I fish her/him out. We all have a cuddle, well both Hannah and I have a quick hug-with-toad [not exactly all]

More swimming. We all nominate our favourite ten pictures for Peter to submit to exhibit at the international Festival coming up in X. Le soir we take a table at the square Monségur, where vegetarianism is not all the rage. Hannah and I decide the cheese galette is a dishcloth (she by the looks, and me by the taste), and I cheer myself up with strawberries and the rock band.

Thursday

More swimming. Hannah cooks. In the evening we walk up to the Chateau for a bit of son et lumière, depicting, on the one side the history of the chateau and on the rear of the building fantastical images under the Sea, prince and princess and some psychedelia.

Friday

Le matin, Hannah, Ruth and I return to Monségur for the market, buy croissants and anklets, then over to the supermarket for provisions. On the way back we stop off to meet Paul, Larkin and Alexis. (Paul has written some of the best tv drama I have ever seen, and it was an honour to be able to tell him so). Larkin and Alexis and I have a general rant about the value of music lessons, and how governments everywhere do not recognise or care about their value.

Excited by bread

Duras sky at night

Have just found out it is Friday. Eek! When did that day go? More swimming. Pete J cooks. Dinner on the patio. Early night. Don’t sleep at all well.

Saturday

Ruth has given us a day off, but I forget.

Rise early, but the nine o’clock start is for for Sunday. Grrr! Go back to bed with a banana, an apricot and a piece of stale croissant. And cuppa tea of course.

Swimming and more swimming. Finish some writing. I think I cook [vegetable stew, of course!] Watch some No Offence and State of Play [to which I am now hooked, and there another five episodes. Oh no!].

Ruth re-enacts my walking into glass door with a tea-tray routine

Sunday is our 9 o’clock start. Four go to Issegeac. Another beautiful little French Town with a market, a Church and architecture to die for.

On way back stop at Eymet for church with old frescoes, then at Monteton, famous for burlesque. I am all sight-seed out, and collapse. Then we all wish Mighty Miggins the Mig Happy Birthday on a selfie vid, and set about collapsing again.

Monday, go for a walk with the dogs around the field, take in another two episodes of State of Play, in the afternoon, take a walk to the Post Office in Duras. This is stupidly hot, yet I did buy the stamps. Le soir we go for a meal in Duras. This is awesome pizza, too big to eat all at once, get the last bit boxed, but fancy a profiterole. Unfeasibly large! See picture!

Unfeasibly large

 At home the last of six State of Play and some selfies with the dog. Tache only agreed if I got on the floor with her.

Tuesday. Hannah and Pete J leave at ten. Then Pete and Ruth drive me to Bordeaux, it’s beautiful, paddle in the fountains by the river, eat,

lunch in Bordeaux

dinner in Duras

 go to airport. Suspect package in a bin. Fire engine, terminals evacuated, They leave. Controlled explosion back into terminal. Now very very crowded. And Bordeaux Airport is a tin shed with not enough seats.

Got to Luton okay, but had foolishly booked a train ticket through Sheffield. You might think that a major London Airport would have good train links, but these were only to London. I couldn't face going south in order to go north, so chose the Sheffield route. I waited an hour. I would have stayed in the Little station cafe but the server had “Happy” by Farrell on a loop on his music system, and worse, he had wandered off so I could be happy [not a description of how I ever feel hearing this irritating little tune] on my own. The East Midlands train became the Marie Celeste as we shed passengers going north; I didn’t even have the relief of the ticket collector saying Can I see your ticket please. There were no refreshments at all. I gazed lovingly and longingly at machines full of e numbers as we stopped at this and that station on our elongated route North. When Georgia picked me up at the station at 11 o’clock, I had been traveling for 12 hours, was dehydrated and my back ached. I settled onto the sofa and binge-watched the last two episodes of Unforgotten.

The Third Lille Trip Cats on the Roofs and Dogs under the Blanket

In the end I said to Viviane, if we don’t do it now . . . . . .

Sparrows and leaders May-June 2016.

And thus it was that I found myself contemplating the board at Leeds Station announcing that the trains to Kings Cross were all cancelled. This is not a good start. Quick as a flash I am on the slow train to Sheffield and then an overcrowded one to St Pancras.

cat posing on roof

Here I am frantically emailing Vivianne to advise her of my impending lateness. Then enter Sue the WonderGuard into my life. She phones Eurostar and gets their support as I attempt the impossible, getting past customs and passport control in the twenty minutes between arrival and departure. Then, as my phone won’t connect to France, she lets me text Viviane from her own mobile!

She is probably the one who engineered the early arrival of the train into St Pancras, because after that I made the 3.04 and même mieux, Vivianne is here to meet me at Lille-Europe. Huge memories of when we met in January 2016, and later the same year when I came over again, this time with Bex, Wanda, Yi Bai, Millie and Chloe for some heavy duty steelpanning at the Mome Arts Festival.!

The Youth Hostel from the earlier trip

The school where we played our last concert in 2016

We scoot to Wasquehal, stop at the supermarché and then Vivianne takes her community choir. Home to Roubaix, to see Jurgen, Marthe again, and to meet Pina (the new dog), have a beer and scrumptious cheese salad.

Viviane's community choir

The cats live on the roofs and come into the bathroom for food and shelter.

In the night rain is pitter-patter music on the roofs. We are awake at seven, Pina is demonstrating her love of blankets and posing.

me Valerie Sophie

I spend the morning down Memory Lane with Claire at Lakanal in Fives (pronounced Feev). She teaches her class Michael Jackson- Black and White, Go Down Moses and One other. Then they play me a song that they learnt with Idris, Sacré Charlemagne. What a lovely atmosphere, what a lovely sound.

me Idris Vivianne

me Marie-Pierre Matilde

Claire

Claire then delivers me to Charlotte, and we take lunch in a cafe in Grand Sud. Charlotte then does v dramatic story telling to start, and I am with her on the beach picking up shells. Then she gets me to teach He’s Got the Whole World to her lovely class in the Grand Sud school (which I do as long as she does the singing), thus incurring a tambourine injury (despite placing them an arm’s length from each other), and some tears.

Bliss

Charlotte then delivers me to Viviane at the Conservatory. Here Viviane and her colleague are frantically packing some strange percussion instruments into a flight case. By now Charlotte has stopped at à Carrefour for me to buy a packet of proper tea, so am heavily involved in making up lost tea time.

Now we collect one of Viviane’s colleague, then daughter Marthe from the metro station, and over to Grand Sud for a Onomatopick. À jazz singing concert for primary schools. Not specially looking forward. . . . .

Mind-Blowing! Dénis, Anna and Mathieu together and separately with their classes, classes with their soloists, the teachers forming a group themselves. Never once did the leaders take their eyes off their charges, never once did the action stop. Viviane introduced the event by singing a phrase then enter Les entrants singing back to her. (Denis’s idea. Why I am not surprised!). the four teachers also form a quartet. Also awesome.

Friday is with the music and dance teachers at a proper old-fashioned village hall in Roubaix, quite close to where we are.

This is the culmination of several weeks work in the schools: three schools come together for a day-long dress rehearsal

Here are some adjectives: Astonishing. Beautiful. Well-paced. Inclusive. Appropriate. Thought-provoking.

Watching and discussing the Rite of Spring

packing away the whatsits

The teachers always looked calm and happy and pleased to see each other. The school teachers all took part, the wheelchair user took to the floor and rolled and took positions with the rest. He was included and attended to but not fussed over anymore than any other kid. Sometimes he pushed himself, sometimes he allowed himself to be pushed.

Sophie accompanied the dancers with a solo cello, then she sang little phrases, ever-increasing in pitch to the students. She had the voice of a bell, like crystal. In itself it was beautiful to listen to. There were a few backing tracks. One school’s theme was animals, including using Saint-Saens’ Elephant as a track. One little girl, in plaits, imagining with her huge wide eyes that she was in the countryside had me totally believing her. Pupils played bird whistle, rainsticks and chime bars as they danced.

There were two other activities. One dance teacher showed the classes different versions of the Rite of Spring on a video, and discussed them with the children, and how that ballet is the most important for both dance and music. Plus there was some dancing in a very small room, using the smallness and the walls. Veronique led the day with dance teachers, Matilda and x, Sophie played cello and sang, Marie-Pierre led the percussion, and Valerie took photos.

Marie-Pierre drove me back to the Conservatoire. A coupla cuppas, then walking in the rain back to the Hotel du Paix. Unfortunately since I stayed there in January 2016, they have renamed the Rue de Paris, and the hotel’s sign was quite obliterated by the signs around it. I walked straight past it, spend another half an hour chugging round, till I found some signs for Gare Lille Flandres, and then retraced my two year old steps from there. Lol. Sight-seeing in the rain. What’s not to like?

Lie on hotel bed, watching Monfils at Roland-Garros on the tele. Then meet Viviane for one last beer, and Idris (for no beers as he is fasting). So happy he made the effort to come for the flowers and colours (!).

Marthe Viviane Valerie

Bed late, up early, home safe, no aventures this time.