Lucie's lesson on line

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Day two at school for D'Arcy and Lucie.
The day's new adventure was to learn to walk, on the lead, behind the jogger..
D'Arcy had to go first, because propinquity with his pretty niece has to be kept to a minimum. It took him a little while to get the jist of the thing: for a couple of paddock-laps he tried to play tug-of-war with me and my tractor, but he soon settled and when he had done a couple of model laps, Wendy trundled him down the alleyway to Yard Number One, specially set up for feisty young boys.



Safely installed, he was given the benefit of a bit of worldly wisdom from one of our Elder Statesmen



And before long, he was hooning proprietorially round his new kingdom and apparently not even thinking about fillies



We thought that Lucie, who gives an air of being a little more apprehensive than D'Arcy, would probably go less well, and need a soft and gentle lesson. Nothing of the kind! As the tractor moved slowly off, I waited for the customary first protesting tug ... but it never came. She walked nearly all the way, with just the odd little hop and skip when we went over a bump. A splendid first effort .. Wendy had no need to walk alongside her, and so was able to film the (as you can hear, decidedly windy) proceedings



Bringing up babies can be tough, but these two (so far!) are proving pleasing pupils!

Bathroom!

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Oh Lord! It's much much more expensive than I intended...
But what the hell, I'm only going to do it once in my life..
And its nothing to do with the fact that Mr Richard Revamp Design is cuter than its safe to be...

The Language of the Flowers

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On 15 February 1996, Ian and I planted a magnolia tree in our garden at Fernenland, St Arnaud, to mark my fiftieth birthday.

Not too many years later, when we quit Fernenland for Gerolstein, we took the commemorative plant along. But it never seemed to thrive, and for ten years and more it gave us just a display of leaves and occasionally a shrivelled frostbitten floral bud..

Finally, now, with my 64th birthday hovering in the near future, the tree has burst into flower ..

I wonder if it's trying to tell me something,,

What a Difference a Year Makes

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Not even a year. Here are D'Arcy and Lucie (still glued to their mothers) in December of 2008...




And here they are on 1 October 2009.
D'Arcy has changed enormously (he was, of course, only a month old in his 'hospital' picture), and has grown into probably the best-looking of all Gwen's babies. Let's hope that Beauty Does as Beauty is!
Lucie, who has the Sundon blood inherited from her mother, is rather finer than her uncle. She is also a Girl. And thus she hasn't done the boyish burst of yearish-old growing that D'Arcy has. But she's still as stunning as she was when a wee thing...
It's evident that Love You throws splendid babes..
And in a month or so we'll have another around the place!

Babes Behind Bars!

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No, it’s not what you think. I’m talking horses. As usual.
It’s that time of year when those little bundles of long legs (and monstrous knees) that came into our lives 10-12 months ago take their first lessons in practical horseship.
Yesterday, Lucie and D’Arcy were hitched to the railings inside the crush, their warm coats removed, and…
A good springtime brushing such as they have never had before.. soft winter hair flying with every stroke of the brush, enough of it to stuff a large cushion! And, amazingly, neither protested..



Every foal we’ve ever had from the ‘Robinson’ breed – from Duchess through Boris and Wanda to Fritzl and Seppl, has always protested.. but not these two! What a nice surprise!
Then, on to feet. They have to learn to let their feet be picked up so that they can be inspected and their hoofs tidied and trimmed. Once again, they were fine. D’Arcy’s trim was quite a long one, but he stayed calm and only tried a few times to nip Wendy’s back..
Lucie was a little less sure but still far better than average. Phew!



Next, the famous wormer. Most horses make a frightful fuss over taking wormers. Lucie’s mother was the worst: she’d put up a ten minute battle rather than take anything by mouth. These days she’s less neurotic, and its down to five minutes, but Lucie ... well, as of today she’s the wormer champion. Although, after having taken the stuff she wasn’t at all impressed with its flavour…



D’Arcy, in his turn, discovered that lead ropes aren’t only for leading, they have other attractions. Like, a substitute for chewing gum! Well, I suppose a boy has to have some bad habits..



Lesson number one done, covers back on, and back to the paddock..
Rather more separate paddocks than before.
For D’Arcy has realised that he is male, and that Lucie (his niece, and anyway 2 months older than him!) is a Woman …

Tomorrow, lesson two…

While that big girl is basking in her success

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and not keeping an eye on her bucket...

It's the moment for a soft-footed kitty to profit from the occasion ..

Elena's Big Day, or 'I am a racehorse'

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Well, it came at last. 23 September 2009. Three and a half years since Elena first became part of the Gerolstein family, and changed her maiden name of ‘Bromac’ for the rolling ‘Elena de Gerolstein’. She’s been through quite a lot since then, including that big operation on her throat, but since she returned to training and then to the workouts track, it’s been evident that she can run somewhat, and that she would undeniably make a racehorse. But fate still had the odd sneaky to throw at her. When she went to qualify something went wrong. When she was about to go a second time, we found that her corpuscles had been up the spout the first time and she wasn’t yet quite over it. So we scratched. Today was the third time. And this time…
It still wasn’t all smoothness. But not because of her. First of all, although it didn’t rain here, it did at Bank’s Peninsula, leaving a soggyish track which would slow the horses by a couple of seconds. Then, we arrived at the track, only to find that the naughty mare had left her bridle back at Gerolstein. So I wandered across to the Edmonds homestead to borrow a replacement. There I met a middle-sized dobermann named Weasel. When I took no notice of him, Weasel pouted and buried his teeth in my calf. So I returned to the racetrack, with bridle, but sticking-plastered behind, and with blood dribbling down my leg. Someone said it’s good luck to get bitten by a dog. If so, thank you Weasel, but next time choose a bit of me that isn’t naked.



Elena’s qualifying heat had drawn a field of … two. But the other starter was a richly-bred Christian Cullen filly from the stud of my old amateur-driving colleague Mike Stratford, trained by the all-(or nearly all)-conquering Tim Butt. Classy company.
Off the mobile gate, Elena powered straight to the front, and Murray [Edmonds] kept her there, hooning along at safely a bit faster than the qualifying-rate needed, towing the other fellow along, until the home straight, where he loomed up greenly outside her. Murray let him loom, and when he zipped past, Murray let him zip. He knew he was five whole seconds inside qualifying time, and there was no sense in gutting our gigantic girl by giving chase uneccessarily. A qualifying trial (unless you are trying to sell your animal and want to look impressive) is just that: all you have to do is beat the clock, and you’re a ‘winner’. Elena not only did the time, she clocked 3 ½ seconds better than the time. On a soggy track, and with an unforced last 400 metres. Excuse us if we’re delighted.
I haven’t got any photos of the race. Well, I have several photos of Elena’s backside: she was gone too fast before the shutter closed! But I do have this one, as she came off the track, and I love it. Wendy hurrying to say ‘well done, our girl’ as Murray brings her in... a qualified racehorse at last!



One last (for the moment) Elena photograph. I can’t resist it. Standing by the float, waiting to be loaded for the homeward journey. Upright and haughty, with that look that made me fall in love with her at first sight at Bromac Lodge in February 2006, saying: ‘I require to be taken home now, if you please’



Tomorrow, on the other side of the world, Ténor will have his turn at the ‘quallies’ at the racetrack of the city of Caen … if he can do as well as she, this will be a wonderful week. Give or take a Weasel-bite.

Half a century ago in the West End..

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It's amazing what you find when you start on a big spring-clean and chuck out..

Look at this. It was taken in February 1962, on the occasion of the London production of Noel Coward's musical Sail Away. That, of course, is the not-yet-Sir Noel looking self-consicously sphinxial in the middle. And the cute little feller with glasses is my Ian ... Ian Archibald Winchcombe Bevan of Australia .. a dozen years before we met.
I wonder if this picture has been reproduced before, or whether I'm adding something to the historical pictorial-data box.

Flu and fire

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It’s a week since I landed in New Zealand. A week of jet-lag and of the most awful Qantas cold (I would definitely count it as flying flu) which, between them, have stopped me from getting sufficiently out and about, even around the green, green paddocks of Gerolstein.
I limped forth for doctor, blood-letter and dentist, I made it to the local racetrack to watch Elena rehearsing for her Big Day on Wednesday, I crawled through the grocery and the hardware shops and fulfilled other such necessities of life, but otherwise … well, I have barely even hugged a horse.



Today, however, dawned a perfect spring day. It was impossible to stay indoors, even to mull my plans for building myself a beautiful bathroom as an anniversary present. I’ve never had one. A beautiful bathroom, that is. Even in my Mayfair mansions, even in my St Paul de Vence triplex, glorious and luxurious homes that they were, the bathrooms wouldn’t have passed muster in a two-star hotel. And this one is the worst of all … see below. You couldn’t swing a starving kitten in it (sorry, Minnie). So, I have called in ‘Revamp Design’ and he is coming the day after tomorrow to look at smashing down a wall and …



Getting ahead of the act, I this morning started a major spring clean and chuck out (‘if you haven’t used it in two years…’), which resulted in a vast heap of burnables, which needed to go on last year’s vaster pile of tree-toppings-in-the-paddock-waiting-to-be-burned, which meant that the mares had to be got out of the fire-paddock, and since the Grand Duchess is nine months gone, it was the perfect day to strip off her winter coat and let her feel the sun on her back, before she was moved on to the lush grass in a fresh and maternally-provocative paddock..
The Duchess is looking splendid. Big, motherly, glowing and splendid. Normally, she will foal at the beginning of November, so I had better make sure to be here. Even though, of course, the child she is carrying is not mine. Being already in possession of quite enough baby horses, I have loaned Duchess this year to The Man Who Knows More About Breeding Than Anyone. But, of course, I shall still be a godfather.



So. I’ve burned the annual fires, and with them I’ve thrown out great chunks of my old life: stuff that I’ve hiked, down the years, from London to St Paul to New Zealand. I know, on occasions like this you can burn too much. But I don’t think the National Museum/Library of New Zealand will want Gänzl manuscripts and memorabilia. This country has never really considered me a ‘New Zealand author’, any more than they consider my brilliant brother a ‘New Zealand poet’. (I will say however that the Library does annotate my cards ‘author is a New-Zealander’). Oh dear, ‘funeral’ pyres do provoke extraordinary thoughts.

But in a way, that’s what this is. During the winter, Wendy has worked magic in transforming the farm. It has never looked so lovely. But it is different. So now it is up to me. It is time, nearly three years on, to turn this place into ‘Kurt’s holiday home’ rather than ‘the place where Kurt and Ian lived, and Ian died’. The bathroom will be a good start. Go for the bathroom…?

Livia de Gerolstein

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Now, those of you who read this blog will know all about Elena de Gerolstein, Lucie de Gerolstein and D’Arcy de Gerolstein – how could you not --, but you may very well not have heard, except in passing, about Livia de Gerolstein..
Yes, another one.
But Livia lives not in New Zealand – nor even in France -- but in Australia.
And, yes, she’s ours. Mine and Wendy’s.

How did we come to own a horse in Australia? Well, its like this ….

During the weeks before I leaped on the late lamented Gazellebank and headed for Europe, half a year and more ago, a yearling sales catalogue came through the post. I do wish they wouldn’t. In the years when I wanted these catalogues, I couldn’t get them. Since I actually went and bought a horse (Elena), they never stop coming. And this one, for heaven’s sake, was from Australia. I remember it was an evening when Wendy was out, and I was dully watching Trackside and, for some reason (dull Trackside?), I picked up the despised catalogue and whoops … it opened at Lot 171. Bay filly Live or Die-Estelle Bromac. The said Estelle just happens to be my Elena’s sister. And there, on the pedigree page, were the names of our dear Tui (Hot Blooded Woman), Cliffie (Lite Gasp), Wilma (Lite Phantom) …
What on earth was this horse doing in Australia? Ah, well…
But in the days that followed, I kept opening that catalogue, until page 171 became stained with coffee, highlighter and ... well, just a little wine..



I talked (as I do), and finally Graeme Lang trekked from Melton to Glenn and Sue O’Connell’s place near Whittlesea to look her over, and reported that she was a nice and not oversized (sorry, Elena) girl…
But the sale was to be the day that I sailed out of Auckland. What to do? Should I? Shouldn’t I? Wasn’t this really a ‘coup de folie’? Well, maybe if she were really cheap…? Elena cost $20,000. So, say .. ten? ‘You’ll never get her for that’ said the pundits. Very well, I’ll go to eleven. Maximum. That way, at least I’ve tried.
And so, on the somethingth of February 2009, as the Gazellebank and I sailed forth for Nouméa, at the price of exactly $11,000, Wendy and I became the owners of Elena’s niece, the filly who we will call Livia de Gerolstein (or as near to that as the Victorian racing authorities will allow us), and who is now in work at Mr Lang’s place in Melton, Vic, with the prospects of making an early two year-old. (Hear that, Elena!).

I, of course, haven’t yet met Livia, but Wendy managed to grab a couple of days respite and dash across the Tasman Sea … ermmm, cousin Tracy may not be David Hamilton with a camera, but at least Wendy has now driven our youngest ‘daughter’ and I – until I in my turn dash across the great divide, have a kind of a photo.



Welcome to our little family, Livia. Along with Elena, Tenor, Rosy, Lucie, D’Arcy, Rose, Mikie… from Les Baux, Normandy, to Sefton, New Zealand, by way of Melton, Victoria…

Two tired travellers...

at Sydney airport..

Amelie only has to get from here to Bondi Beach..
Kurt has a five-hour wait for his delayed Emirates plane, and a 3-hour flight to Christchuch, and all that time the Qantas cold bug that I caught on leg one of this cavalcade is germinating horribly away ..
Ah, travel!

Look Homeward, Gänzl

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Well, right now New Zealand is the nearest thing to a home I have … and it's more than half a year since I set foot there. And summer has come to an end in Europe, or at least its threatening to, just a Christchurch is bursting into blossom… so, it’s clearly there that I should be, isn’t it?

My last couple of days in Berlin were as eventful as all the others.
Geerd returned from his romantic voyage to Switzerland, Horst resurfaced, Kevin’s friend (and now mine, too!) Florida Eser descended from Givrins for a flat-hunting expedition in Berlin, and we all headed for an evening out dining very agreeably indeed at the Fischerhütte on the banks of the Schlatensee.



The next morning, Kevin chauffeured Florida around some of the choicer residentially-possible areas of Berlin … we took in breakfast on the Stuttgarter-Platz in Charlottenburg (I chose a Bavarian breakfast, which was a pair of very perfumed white sausages with mustard and bagel) …



and then continued on to Prenzlauer Berg. The lovely old buildings of the area are rapidly being converted into dashing restorations, or giving place to half-million euro apartments, but a few derelict buildings still remain to remind you of the East Germany of not so very long ago.





Then, a few hours later, I was on my way to Tegel airport. With my red cabin bag, stuffed with the necessities of life.. and nothing else.
Booking flights on the Internet is fraught with hazard. The Internet – notably the Travel Overland website -- doesn’t tell you that Air Berlin doesn’t book people and suitcases through onto Qantas, and that you therefore have to leave an extra hour between flights to allow for recuperating luggage, re-checking in etc etc. It just sells you almost impossible collections of theoretically adjoining flights and leaves you to get out of the merde thus created all on your own. My bad BMI Baby experience of last year had, fortunately, made me wary. I checked, and became aware that, with suitcase, I wouldn’t make it. So my suitcase remains in Berlin whilst I am now in New Zealand.
My thirty-something hours of airports and airplanes weren’t, surprisingly, all bad. Both the Air Berlin and Qantas desk staff were splendidly helpful and cheerful, and the dreaded change between the said two airlines (without luggage) at Frankfurt went like a dream, thanks to a chance encounter with an angel. Ravishing, 21 year-old Amelie from Charlottenburg (rising international TV presenter and surfing instructor), off for a few months backpacking round Australia, took me under her wing, got me safely to the plane, and we spent the flight to the other side of the world in jolly company. Amelie’s voyage to the Southern hemisphere will now, hopefully, include New Zealand.
The only hiccough in an otherwise comfy and punctual trip was the lateness of my final flight: Sydney-Christchurch on Emirates. But their plane was easily the nicest … so I may use them for the whole trip next year. If they promise to be on time…


But that’s a good few months away. Right now, I am revelling jet-laggedly in being back at Gerolstein. A spick-and-span Gerolstein (Wendy has done amazing things in the gardens etc), glittering with white sunshine as it doffs its winter coat and prepares for spring. The grass is green, the plum-blossoms are out and the magnolia buds are cowering from the morning frosts. The horses are still as shaggy as mountain goats, but it won’t be long… the New Zealand summer is on its way.

A book review

Writing adverse criticism is never much fun. Each time you go to a new show, or read a new book, you always hope it's going to be a winner. Well, here is my antidote to Edgar Allan Poe

My review is on the website of the Operetta Research Centre at: http://www.operetta-research-center.org/main.php?task=3&cat=1&sub_cat=1&id=00112 .

Nearly a Racehorse

The story of my lovely Lena – ‘Elena de Gerolstein’ – the Falcon Seelster-Ester Bromac filly I bought at the yearling sales more than three years ago, has become a saga. She has had more false starts than an ancient tractor in her attempts to make it to the race-track and to become a racehorse. But now, at last, following her grisly operation for what ailed her all along, she is nearly there.
Last weekend, she was taken to the Rangiora workouts for her first appearance on any track as a now unhandicapped horse. In order to give her some idea as to what this business is all about, she was sent round in the 2000 metres Learners’ heat, and she duly led the field home in comfortable style, with respectable 60 and twenty-nine second quarters as her final splits.
So this week she was taken up a notch, and set to run over 2600 metres, in the regular heat for as yet unqualified horses. In spite of running greenly – for although she is five she knows next to nothing about the racing game – she turned up trumps again, taking the lead at the home turn and finishing off in 59.8 and 28.6 at the head of the field.
One more step to go.
All being well, on Wednesday she will go back to Rangiora for the official qualifying trials, and hopefully, at the end of the day, and in time for my return to New Zeaand soil, Elena will be, at last, a racehorse!

Getting Around in Germany, or No, No, Mr Poe

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A colourful day on Thursday. First, a stroll around the Reinickendorf-area in northern Berlin, through the Rathauspark, and ending with a quick beer at the very companionable and cosy Zur Dorfquelle, an old inn in Alt Wittenau, alongside the village green and church, and just around the corner from my 'home' at the house of Kevin's parents. I struck up conversation with Michael from the Nordgraben (a little river round the corner), who breeds German shepherd dogs and somehow the quick beer turned into more than one… Come evening, Kevin and I headed for the fashionable, East Berlin Prenzlauerberg and there we lucked upon a new restaurant, the Zum dritten Mann on the corner of the Kollwitzstrasse. A delicious and sophisticated dinner, the best of its kind I’ve had in Berlin (gaspacho with watermelon and a tiger prawn, Seeteufel with spinach and wild rice, a light Austrian rouge…), which ended with an almost embarrassing hiccup. They don’t take Visa cards, no matter how platinum! From there, lured by the promise of a performance of Offenbach’s Les deux aveugles, on to the splendidly reconstructed Konzerthaus (ex-Schauspielhaus) in the Gendarmenmarkt. There was no Offenbach, but instead we promenaded in the impressive main hall during a performance of the Die Meistersinger overture, energetically played by an orchestra made up of members of the public. A great atmosphere… At 11pm, we were to be found on the forecourt of the Hall, making music (?) on a giant set of resonating metal tubes…

  NO, NO, MR POE! .

 

Friday, Kevin, Alessandro and I went even further afield. A two-hours plus drive south to the Saxon city of Halle, the birthplace of Handel, lured this time by the ‘world premiere’ of a new musical, directed by a friend of Kevin’s and Alessandro’s (thus the pilgrimage). Halle must have been a beautiful city in the 18th century. It has some spectacular buildings and some really characterful corners. Alas, it has been aesthetically murdered during its past half-century under East German socialism: every building constructed since the war is of a coarse ugliness scarcely to be believed, and as a result Halle has become a city with something of a split personality.

  We visited the Moritzburg – an exhibition of German art, much of it 20th century, housed in a very neatly adapted group of 16th-century buildings -- we passed by the Birthplace of Handel and through the Marktplatz with its several-spired church and its ‘Red Tower’, before ending our cavalcade at the splendid local Opera House.

 

The Opera House, understandably, specialises – though far from exclusively -- in the production of the works of Handel, but -- having had some success with the production of a musical -- they decided, this year, to produce another. But not a tried and true musical, a virtually untried one. I wonder who is going to shoulder the blame for Edgar Allan Poe. Here it would undoubtedly be kinder to say nothing more, but I was in Halle to see and report on the production, so here goes. I cannot imagine why Eric Woolfson, the author and composer of the musical, thought that the life story of Poe had in it the material for a theatrical piece. It doesn’t. People stand around and talk. A few of them sing, a couple of them (and the vast, hard-working chorus) a great deal too much. The performer taking the title-role fiddles around with what looks like an omnipresent white birdcage and rips the stopper from a few bottles in the nearest thing to action in the course of the night. And as if to compensate for this lack of histrionic movement, everybody, endlessly and infuriatingly, does choreography. I thought I was back in 1950s or 1960s Britain, watching a flop Wendy Toye production at Birmingham. I simply could not believe what I was seeing. Or hearing. Huge amounts of (public!) money have been flung into the production of this flavourless show, almost everywhere without judgement and without taste. A set of fluffy-tulley white costumes which accompanies a wobbly aria from the grave by the hero’s late mother could go down as one of the visual horrors of theatrical history. And as for the busy scenery, trundled on and off by stagehands, or projected on front or back cloths (what was that thing on the gauze?)… All these things must have cost a packet, as also the vast sound desk in the middle of the stalls which bleached all the singing into the same sexless studiofied sound … and all to no avail. Because if you haven’t got a piece, all the decoration, all the frills, all the money and over-the-top publicity in the world (and, Lord preserve us, the entire contents of the bible of ancient choreography) can’t make one. And here there is no piece. Just a dull collection of theatrical and musical reminiscences of a hundred other flops seen and buried. Is there nothing nice to be said? Was there not one moment during the evening when I could sit up and smile? Yes. One. At the beginning of the second act, there is a little waltz song bred from Oklahoma, West Side Story and Gone with the Wind, and sung amid a welter of mint julep scenery (plus chorus, plus choreography) by a young soprano, Evita Komp, in the role of the ephemeral Mrs Poe. It was pretty, she was excellent – the one performer of the night of whom I wanted to hear more. Alas, the raven got Mrs Poe (I think) and she was heard nevermore, except as a Miserables-ish spirit. After forty years of viewing and reviewing musicals I am still not brave enough to lie. To do the darling-you-were-wonderful act with my tongue in my cheek. So as a rule I don’t go to post-premiere parties. I made an exception for night one of The Phantom of the Opera and last night I went too. The hospitality at Halle was grand. The theatre – as it had with the printing and the front of house and all the trimmings – did the thing in splendid style. How maddening then that all these resources and all this enthusiasm should be wasted on an Edgar Allan Poe.

I have been to the cinema

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Not world-shaking words for most people, but for me, yes. For I am a man who has been to the movies only a few dozen times in his life. I think the last time was for that ‘coarse-acting’ No Bed for Bacon film about Shakespeare in Love, which was enough to put anyone off trying again. Prior to that, I remember from my London years A Passage to India at the Saville, Broken Blossoms and the original Star Wars at the Dominion, and a very bad A Little Night Music at the Curzon. But, over the last three decades, I think that’s about it.
Tonight (Weds), we zoomed across Berlin on Kevin’s motorscooter, took in a nice light supper in the thoroughly beautiful Viktoria-Luise Platz in Schöneberg, and then headed on to the Odeon cinema and the big event. Inglourious basterds (the spelling is important in showing the film’s intentions) is apparently the Big Box Office BlockBuster of The Entire Planet at this time, so I was being brought in at the cutting edge of 21st century world cinema.



So what did I discover? What did I think? I discovered that, in the entertainment world, some things never change. They just get metamorphosed into the language of the times. This film tells a slim tale of a couple of plots to blow up the leaders of the Third Reich (yes, them again), and it tells it in what I think of as the transpontine melodrama style. Lots of simple, exaggerated scenes, two-dimensional acting, colour and movement, bags of manufactured ‘tension’, and, of course, in textbook String of Pearls fashion, buckets of gore. Or, as a little feller I know once said, not ineptly, ‘guckets of bore’. It is the story of how a bunch of fictional Americans (with a little help from a Jewess and a negro) won the war. Haha. Well, it would be ‘haha’ if I were quite sure that a certain part of the population might not take the antics of Lt Rambo Raines and his Dirty not-quite-a-dozen for real.
In traditional fashion, the film ducks from the absurd to the campy, from the extravagant (and of course the gory) to the vastly sentimental, doing nothing by halves, and all the time resembling nothing so much as a vaguely humanised 20th century Japanese cartoon. The ‘action’ kind rather than the pornographic kind (for sex doesn’t get a look in in this show).



This means, of course, that the actors don’t really get to act, although apparently many of them are well known. Not to me, though. I guessed that Brad Pitt (I mean you can’t live in this century without having heard the name) was the one with the second-best part and the cornpone American accent, but that was it. I presume the film will make a very big star of Christoph Waltz (above) who camped the chief baddie in great Robert-Helpmannesque style, and will doubtless camp it again and again, for although the body count in this film is enormous, and nearly the entire principal cast is exterminated in one delicious way or another during the variegated massacres of the evening, both Lt Raines and his antagonist are still alive at the final curtain. So I guess we will have Inglorious .. whoops, Inglourious .. Basterds two, three and twenty-three. Since they have done for the Third Reich, I guess they will move on to extinguish Mussolini, Eva Peron, Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, Colonel Ghadaffi and the United Nations Central Committee to the ringing of tills and the rewriting of the history books.
Whew!
So, the big question. After this, my rebaptism in celluloid, will I go to the cinema again? Maybe. But if I do, I think I shall pick something less determinedly ‘popular’.

PS This was the second time during my Berlin stay that I’ve been to a show featuring a burlesque Hitler (see the already departed The Producers). It really is dreadfully vieux jeu now, maybe someone can come up with something new? Like cowboys and indians?

Adieu, Paris ... noch einmal Berlin!

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And now its time for ‘Adieu, Paris’ as well.

I’ve crammed a lot of social life into my last few days: a Parisian reunion with Barry and Rosemary from Sydney and Brian from Couptrain ... apéritif à la fourchette chez Jean-Baptiste and dinner, of course, at the Bistrot Sainte-Marthe.., an evening chez Alexis, who cooked the most magnificent salmon for us, and an evening out with Christophe and Pierre on the left bank – pastis at the Café Buci, a very nice dinner at No35 in the Rue Jacob (just along from a plaque saying ‘Richard Wagner Lived Here’ even if briefly), and – in a splash of euros – digestifs and coffee at the Pub Saint-Germain (charming atmosphere and disappointingly tarty waitresses). Plus, in between the courses, a wander round the Latin Quarter which Pierre knows intimately and historically, and which in the month of August is almost as thronged with tourists as Barcelona. Finally, a thoroughly exaggerated farewell evening a la maison (how many bottles of wine? .. not possible!), and then heigh ho for Orly once more…

Well, Paris in the last three seasons has certainly given me some good times and grand memories. I’m sure I shall come back again: later, at least, if not sooner.

The final stop on the 2009 leg of my Grand Tour is Berlin. Just for ten days, really to find out if I do want to come back and do an extended stay here in the future. Once again, I’m being looked after by the Clarke family, and today (Tuesday) I sallied forth with Kevin for my first little adventure, luncheon at the lovely old village of Lütbars, very close to the ancient divide between East and West. We ate at the one table outside a little delicatessen on the corner of the Alt-Lütbar … Eisbein mit sauerkraut and a pint of light may not be an adventurous meal for a German (the local equivalent of corned beef and cabbage), but I loved it, and went away with a little Polish sausage for my tea in a paper bag. After lunch we walked along the fields behind the village … a lovely taste of old countryside Berlin where the haymaking and the horses had me feeling half home-sick…



Garçons and their jouets!!
Christophe snapped (on his iphone), Pierre demonstrating to me the utter necessity of possessing an iphone...
and how he can 'put me on the wall' with his machine...

Technology is just moving too fast for me!

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Bye Bye, Barca...

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I don’t suppose we’ll meet again, but it’s been interesting knowing you…

We flew out of Spain on Tuesday 18th August, back to Orly, but scarcely on a high note. For our final night in the city, we went down town to the beach at Barceloneta, and there we drank uncold beer at 3.50 a glass at a sullen beech bar (slap it on the table, and no receipt), and wasted some 180 euros in an excessively mediocre restaurant opposite which served tinned (?) vegetables and shredded lettuce with sole grillé (inadequately filleted) and of which – with the help of a few life-saving brandies -- I blotted the name forever from my memory. No I didn’t: it is Ria de Vigo. Even good Spanish brandy can’t drown it. Point: avoid the beachside tourist traps, and anything that shows pictures of the food served…
Ah, well, you can’t win ‘em all. But I think its worth noting that – apart from the paella at Sitges, which was in a class of its own – the most enjoyable food Barcelona’s eating-places turned up was in the little suburban and city cafes, with their tasty ‘tapas i burradillos’. If ever I go again to Spain, this is a lesson I shall firmly remember.



Apart from food and drink, what will I remember of Barcelona? The heat, of course. That vast heat. And the noise. The vast noise. The thronging town in general, especially on that amazing Fiesta Night… the colour, the smiles, the croquetas, the berberechos, the cold beer and the Vichy Catalan, and the endless traipsing..
The Sagrada Familia, of course, but from the distance. The Placa Reale where we finally sorted out the best cafés (and believe me, there is a huge difference in price, quality and above all, service) and spent a few refreshing hours during our wanderings in the old town. The little area of Sant-Feliu with its charming cafes, and its big classic church, on the Placa de Vila, built 2 months after my birth. And, of course, the magnificent night with Shakespeare at Manaró.
And the swimming pool, without which life in that city would surely be impossible.

We rolled into Paris at the cocktail hour, and made our way straight to my favourite bistrot, Place Saint-Marthe, where the culinary disaster of the previous night was quickly forgotten in the embrace of the marvellous Parisian cuisine that you find there…

Another Big Night Out in Barcelona!

. The suburb of Grazia – halfway across the city from Sant-Feliu and us -- opened its week-long ‘Festival’ yesterday, and we were there. The five of us (3 adults, 2 little girls) took Barcelona’s leisurely but very comfortable tramway from one extreme of its line to the other, walked a quarter of an hour up the deceptively quiet Traverzza di Gracia .. and suddenly we were in the middle of it, just as the festival parade was about to start. All the traditional elements of the Spanish Fiesta were there – the horses, the sweet-throwing, the human-castle athletes, the stick-games, the ear-shattering drums and an even more ear-shattering marching ‘band’ of arquebuses. Quite how one Spaniard in three isn’t totally deaf I will never understand…

  New to me were the fire-devils .. bands of men and girls in Mephistophelean costume, with long forks topped by big red fireworks .. when the crackers are lit, the ‘devils’ run and twirl and dance, in a rain of sparks, until the things explode with the millionth huge BANG of the day…

  I’m not a man for crowds, but here we were in the middle of a whole suburb simply exploding with people (they say over a million people visit the festival during its week of life), and the atmosphere was grand. Everybody smiling, everybody laughing, everybody having a good time … all the joy that I didn’t see at Sitges was here at Grazia. And so were the beautiful people that Sitges lacked .. boys, girls, men, women, children … all together, filling the streets and hanging from the balconies, in a Babel of tongues and laughter, somewhere between Hansel and Gretel's cottage and the garlands of recycled everything. With even a part of a million people thronging the Callers and bars and restaurants. we were lucky to find a table for the nine people we had become, but we did, and there we sat in the hot Spanish air and plastic chairs, drinking beer from plastic cups and nibbling delicious Spanish bits and pieces from plastic plates until what is for me far too late, but evidently for a six year-old French-Espagnol lass, a perfectly normal time. After a quiet bus trip back to Sant-Feliu, I think it was something like 1.30am when I subsided under my sheet… I always wondered why the Spaniards were so good at the Marathon. Now I think I know.

Rosy finishes fast at Ranes

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Yay! Jack has uploaded the last bit of Rosy's race for me ... so here she is 'in person', right on the outside, in the orange colours, mowing 'em down...