meanwhile, here in france...

I have moved!

2010-11-20T12:22:00.001+01:00

I am excited to announce that 'meanwhile, here in france' has, after five years, decided to grow up and be part of the new me on Moveable Type. With the help of the brilliant Julian I have integrated my professional site with two blogs, one called 'meanwhile...' (this is the name I always wanted but it wasn't available on blogspot at the time) and the other, a series of musical essays, called 'cello notes'. In true Julian style, of course, the site is not quite finished, and what is currently a side bar will one day, I hope, be transformed into a row of cute golden buttons, but I think you will agree that already the new look is better. Though I was sad to abandon the fern banner and indeed the poppies, times are changing. Clutter is out and clean white space is in. While Julian redesigned, I took the time to significantly rewrite some old essays and articles so I do hope you will enjoy browsing Ruth Phillips.com and please feel free to give any feedback (especially if something is not working properly!)

Posture and Psyche

2010-11-15T17:36:00.003+01:00

(Adapted from an article that appeared in the BBC Music Magazine in 2005.)

It is the first day of the music course. In the bare fluorescent-lit schoolroom are twelve roll-top desks pushed aside and four young string players playing a Brahms quartet in front of a chalk board. Immediately I sit down to coach them I am struck by each of the musicians' physical differences. Although they are playing the same score, it is as if, in this small room, we have the gestural equivalent of Swan Lake, The Sex Pistols, The Gypsy Kings, and the recent New Age title, Solo Didgeridoo, competing for airspace.

Kirsty

Kirsty, the cellist in the quartet, is achingly pretty, willow-like, with long legs emerging from a flowing skirt and ending in petite court shoes. Her long-lashed unblinking eyes constantly scan the room for approval. An eager student, her positive attitude is reflected in her posture, which is projected forward and wide open in the front.

'I am going to be a professional cellist!' Kirsty tells me in the rehearsal break, and I don't know why I feel sad.

After the break I observe and listen further. Kirsty reminds me of a ballet dancer with her arms in third position. She has a long endpin which means the contact point between her bow and her cello is far from her body and the natural swing of her arm. Her rhythm is somewhat unreliable and her bow arm, though elegant, shakes. Consequently her sound is airy. I notice that she seems happiest in the upper half of the bow where she does not have to deal with the natural mass of her arm. When I stand behind her I cannot help feeling that the back of her is like a shadow of the front. Where the front is animated, brimming over, tilted forward and convex, the back appears to be lifeless, hollow, concave and defeated.

Towards the end of the first day's session Kirsty collapses with excruciating lower back pain and has to be taken to the infirmary.

During the week's coaching I try and bring Kirsty's attention to her back, and to the inside rather than the outside of her. I help her find a sitting position which is centred and resting on her sitting bones. I get her to close her eyes and listen rather than look in order to be together with her colleagues. With her eyes closed I ask her to observe her breathing and what it does to her body, in particular the back of her rib cage. Of her own accord Kirsty experiments with a lower endpin and it seems, by Friday, that her back pain is easing off. Her rhythm has improved and her sound has more body.

Some of the questions that arise for me as I work with Kirsty are:

1. Is Kirsty's projection forward in space connected to her being projected forward into her future as a professional cellist?

2. Could giving attention to her back, in helping her become more centred physically, help her become more present?

3. Could it be that looking and listening outwards for approval from her colleagues and teachers is sabotaging Kirsty's inner voice?

I look again at the four musicians and wonder what might be influencing their posture, their rhythm, their tone, their listening: Do they feel 'behind' a sibling? pushed 'down' by Mum? Are they trying to 'rise' to Dad's standards? Are they told they are beautiful, slow, quick, fat, loud, shy, elegant? That they are a terrible dancer or a good leader?

Andrea and Faith

Andrea, the second violinist, holds her violin low and angled downwards like a folk musician, whereas Faith, very much the soloist and the leader, holds her instrument high and angled upwards. It turns out both these postures have advantages and disadvantages in the two sections of the last movement of the quartet.

Johannes Brahms was strongly influenced by Hungarian folk music, and in the first section Andrea, breathing and moving easily in her baggy combat trousers, has the advantage, grasping the punchy syncopations like a barefoot drummer. Faith, meanwhile, is having difficulty touching the earthy quality of the music. With her violin angled upwards, the natural swing of her arm round her torso is inhibited. She breathes not from her abdomen (which, anyway, is squished by tightly fitting jeans) but in shallow gasps. The silver cross resting on her clavicule jogs up and down as she struggles with the short rhythmic phrases.

First of all I help Faith to breathe from her abdomen. This does involve loosening a button or two but we are all girls in the room so, with good humour, she obliges. Next I encourage her to feel the musical impulses coming from the same place. I ask her to take the lead from her colleague and let her violin point less to the heavens and more towards the earth. As she starts to feel the uninhibited swing of her arm, Faith's sound doubles and her rhythm begins to pulsate. During the week a new way of quartet playing emerges that does not involve three people following the nod of one other person but rather, four people connecting, through their breath, to the same shared impulse.

Some of the questions that arise for me as I work with Faith are:

1. Is the high angle of Faith's violin connected to being a leader and her desire to set a high example?

2. Is Faith an older or more dominant sibling and is someone at home getting squashed?

3. Does Andrea's earth-bound attitude represent a part of Faith's shadow?

We arrive at the lyrical transformation of the theme into a legato phrase that seems never to land as it reaches up and up into the heavens. Whilst Andrea is fighting against gravity to keep the melody going Faith is spinning the phrase out into eternity. During the week I encourage Andrea take inspiration from Faith and lift her fiddle to free the horizontal plane of her arm movement, to open up in the front of her body and allow more scope for long phrases. At one point, like actors changing masks, I get the two firls to swap shoes: Faith's strappy sandals with their little heel for Andrea's Nikes. As, gradually, Andrea takes off and begins to fly with the long phrases, she and Faith begin to rise and dip in perfect harmony through Brahms' music.

Some of the questions that arise for me as I work with Andrea are:

1. Is Andrea's second fiddle persona influencing her downward posture?

2. Does she find herself in a supportive rôle at home and does this prevent her from flying?

3. Is the ambitious soloist persona (represented here by Faith) part of Andrea's shadow?

Greta

Greta is not a pretty girl. In fact I have to admit I feel sorry for her. She slouches. Her knees are fat at the end of her short skirt. When the phone in her breast pocket lights up with text messages she exchanges it for her bow (regardless of whether or not she is in the middle of a phrase) and taps out replies with more bounce than she puts into her quavers. The thing about Greta is that I keep on forgetting to give her attention. If this were a therapy session and this my 'transference', I would deduct that Greta is simply not there.

When, in the break, I ask Greta what brought her to the course she says 'I was supposed to be on the violin but they didn't have any places left. I'm just filling in for a violist who cancelled.'

The first thing I do (when indeed I do remember to give some attention to her) is to tell Greta the story of when I first worked with Nicholas Harnoncourt and how, despite the fact that we could all play our notes fine and it was the bloody violins that were having problems, he spent three hours working with the violas and cellos, trying to find the perfect buoyant engine. After these three hours, even though not one violin bow had touched the string, all the violinists' problems, both technical and musical, disappeared. Faith, Kirsty and Andrea smile at this anecdote but Greta's face remains unmoved. It is only when I ask her what, after all, is more exciting in a sandwich, the bread or the filling, that she smiles for the first time. And when she smiles she is not only there but she is beautiful! As we work on her running quavers as the life-blood coursing through the music Greta seems to creep back in to the room. With a vital rôle to play she becomes animated.

Some of the questions that arise for me as I work with Greta are:

1. How can Greta bring her self to a rôle for which she has no feeling?

2. I wonder if Greta is a middle child and/or often ignored.

3. If unchecked, does Greta risk going through life as an extra player?

Of all the four musicians, I find myself relating most strongly to Greta and to Kirsty. Although the older child, I was slow to learn and my brother, a violinist, was quick and brilliant. Desperate to please and to be approved of, especially as there were fragile family relationships seemingly dependent on my success, I was convex in the front of my body and my eyes were wide open. Thus I did not have any connection to my inner voice, to my back, or to the ground. Every time I felt insecure I made my endpin longer and became even more ungrounded. With no attention given either in my family or at the specialist music school to sport or the physicality of playing, I was completely disembodied. This lead to problems with stage fright. I longed to soar like Faith or rock like Andrea but instead I ended up filling in gaps in concerts quivering my way through 'easy' slow movements. I then became an extra player in many orchestras and chamber groups, becoming a member of (a part time) orchestra only in my late twenties.

Now, of course, I realize that there are many different ways of learning and that mine, though 'slow', was also deep. Through meditation I have become more attuned to my inner voice, and indeed have learned to recognize the voices that are distracting me from it. Thanks to the work-out wake-up call I had in an American university and to yoga and Alexander Technique I have become more embodied and no longer suffer from stage fright. Though when I was these girls' age I never thought I would, I can, at last, both rock and soar. What occurs to me while I am coaching them is that music training can be a training in so much more than just playing music. It can be an opportunity to jump out of the moulds made for us by family structures and by our social, economic or political circumstances, an opportunity for rockers to soar and soarers to rock, for laggers to run and runners to chill, for leaders to follow and followers to take to the wind. Our posture, so long as it is always in motion, can be an ever changing expression, not just of our own personality, but of the human psyche.

(All characters in this article are fictional.)

venice and home

2010-11-12T19:08:00.001+01:00

How hard is it to wheel a box of eggs over a Venetian bridge?

We had a rainy week in Venice but it suits the city of course to have a liquid grey light. Anyway, nothing could take away the joy of the daily visit to the Rialto market

Followed by prosecco and sandwichettini at our fave joint, Al Mercà...

Then LUNCH at the flat and some of the best fish I have ever had. San Pietro (Saint Peter's fish), rombo (brill i think), prawns...and all with those greener than green greens the Italians are so good at....this season rape and rucola, but in others cavolo nero and purple sprouting broccoli...

..Which brings me to the sad fact about the Potager du Peintre; that all the lovely seeds brought home from Italy of the above, thought nurtured under cloches and transplanted with love by us, were munched and mangled by a very mean red and black beetle, the only treatment for which, apparently, though organic, has just been taken off the market.

Hoping for the only other killer of said bête, the first frost, I have no taken up the last crop, the leeks, and put in a winter garden. Chard (if it survives), spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, garlic and shallots. Plus winter seeding of peas and broad beans. Raphael next door, aged twelve, has, in the absence due to workload of my husband, become my keen assistant.

Making mozzarella...

2010-10-28T18:23:00.001+02:00

..on Tonino's farm in Puglia.

Provence and the British Imagination

2010-10-27T19:27:00.001+02:00

here is the link to Julie's blog with everything you need to know about Julian's book signing and conference moment in Aix, except that on the Thursday night we are thrilled to announce that Gary Humphreys, the writer who wrote the beautiful introduction to the book, will be reading his piece before the signing.

Provence and the British Imagination

Homage to Sandor Vegh

2010-10-05T18:00:00.008+02:00

Thirty or so young musicians are curled up on velvet love-seats and scabby leather armchairs. Some clutch at tea and scones with gobs of cornish cream, and others at an early-bird half of ‘scrumpy’, the local cider. The remains of the log fire from last night's quartet-reading session relax in the oversized grate. Out of the lead paneled triple window, beyond trestle tables covered with remains of pasties and salad, beyond the abandoned croquet game on the tufty grass rolls the sea, its rhythmic crash against the cliffs constantly reinforcing what the maestro is saying.

We are in the Great Room at Porth-en-Alls at the International Musician’s Seminar, and in front of us is Sandor Vegh, the larger than life Hungarian musician. He has lain down his violin. With one hand and he is making as if to pull something very long out of his mouth and with the other he is making scissor movements, as if he is cutting the long thing that is coming out of his mouth. From his gut we hear a semi disgusted sound ‘Naaaaaaaa’ punctuated, each time he makes the scissor movement, by the word ‘Cutted!’ . Suddenly he stops, swings round on his chair (his belly and several chins seemingly a split second behind the rest of him) and cries:

‘Why you make macaroni sound?Naaaaaaaa… Cutted! Naaaaaaaaa…. Cutted!’

The student lets her violin hang from its scroll hooked in her sweating fingers and looks at Vegh. For those of us who have been here fifteen years on the trot, of course, the little piece of theatre is a welcome reminder of the curved nature of things, whether they be notes, waves, phrases, pasties, forearms, chins or purfling. However, for those for whom this is the first encounter with the great man who played with Casals and was friends with Bartok, there is a little more explaining to do.

Mr Vegh juts a fat first finger at the window and says: ‘Look ze waves! Avery sing in nature is caaaaarved!’

On that day, and on many days before it and still to come, from that grand oak chair in the Great Room looking out to sea, Mr Vegh taught me possibly the greatest lesson I ever learned. That nothing - no note, no phrase, no symphony, no movement, no preparation, no vibration - is made from straight lines. Meanwhile I have often wondered if, in his lifetime, not that it is very important, he gleaned any more information about pasta shapes. I still wonder, when he said macaroni (the curviest type of pasta available) did the Maestro in fact mean spaghetti, which is long and straight? Or, even better, flat sheets of hard edged lasagne that could well describe some sounds I have heard? Or perhaps Mr Vegh was simply incapable of contemplating anything straight in the universe. I shall never know.

(Sandor Vegh 1912-1997)

A traditional French folk tune

2010-10-03T16:44:00.008+02:00

It is the usual Wedensday kerfuffle at Mourchon: Twenty-five Americans arriving for lunch on a Rick Steve’s
‘Villages and Vineyards of Eastern France’ tour, Mum, Grandmum, and little sister serving goats’ cheese quiche, the excitement of a new kitten who loves the chestnut cake a little bit too much, grandpa trying to ration the rosé, Dad trying to snatch some leftover fromage in between the tour and the afternoon’s picking, and a ballet outfit waiting to be worn for only the second time. Aggie, meanwhile, is curled up as if nothing were going on but the wind whistling in the vineyard. On the sofa with a book. Oblivious.

‘I’ve written a story….’ she says when I enter. Aggie is nine and plays the cello very well. She has been both well taught (not by me, I might add) and studious. However, the connection between her love of the arc of a story and that of a piece of music is about as tenuous as the connection between my love, at her age, of dancing to the Bee Gees and playing a baroque Gigue. She continues. ‘…about the traditional French folk song I am going to play you.’

It is unlike me, but I actually try, for a minute, to temper my excitement. ‘Do tell me your story, Aggie. Do you have it written down?’

‘No. Yes, well it’s at the other house, but it’s in my head. It’s about a little girl, well, it’s in the second world war and she’s in her room and she wakes up and well she feels something is different…..’

It is a beautiful story. A perfect fairy tale with all the elements we need to construct a piece of music: A young heroine, an exotic location, a premonition, a village chorus, the handsome horseman with some big news, an unraveling scroll (not quite from the right century but who cares) and lastly confirmation of the premonition.

Aggie concludes ‘…. And that is when the little girl thinks, I knew something was different about today, and she feels happy.’

First, by playing the piece (fortunately in three parts, two of which I can just about play simultaneously) we establish how many phrases we have in which to tell her story. Then by stopping at the end of each phrase, listening to the silence and identifying the feeling in the room before we continue, we decide what kind of mood each phrase has and whether it is, for example, a statement, question, answer or exclamation. There are five phrases, we decide. 1. Questioning. 2. Confirming. 3. With a sense of unraveling. 4. With a sense of excitement. 5. A joyous statement with a feeling of peaceful resolution.

Both Aggie and I are excited by the story, and after we work on it for a while I ask her if she would like for us to play it for the family. Back in the kitchen twenty-five chestnut puddings and cream are scurrying out the door, the tiniest barrista I have ever seen (little sister Lilla) is working the Nespresso machine, there is a pile of washing up to be done and coffee to be served to the punters on the lawn, but everyone, including the six week old kitten, decides they can spare a few minutes to listen to Aggie’s story.

Aggie’s story goes like this:

A little girl is in lying in her bed in her French village house. Through the open windows, on this particular summer’s day in 1945, she can hear not just the breeze and the usual birdsong, but something different. A new sound. She thinks, something special is going to happen today….

The little girl walks towards the window, looks out on the street, and sees that people are milling about everywhere. In doorways, on the pavements and the road. It is not just the normal milling either, the going-to-the-boulangerie or catching-up-with-a-neighbour milling. This is special milling. It is then the little girl catches sight of the handsome man in uniform on horseback whom everyone seems to be watching.

The man on horseback starts unraveling a very long scroll. The tension amongst the villagers is mounting…

He starts to read the script which has an endless preamble ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, His Royal Highness….’ Blah blah. The villagers are becoming impatient to know the news.

The man on horseback finally delivers the news. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen! The war is over!’. The little girl is overjoyed and thinks to herself quietly, yes, I knew something special was going to happen today.

Aggie starts playing quietly, sleepily. The sleepiness makes her arm move slowly and heavily producing a perfect ‘Once-upon-a-time’ sound, with core and yet not too definite. She allows a questioning silence between phrases one and two, and yet she is eager to go on with the story so her upbeat has energy. During the second phrase, the fresh breeze at the window and the sense of confirmation make her bow move more briskly and with more attack, causing the sound to be airier with more defined edges. The bow slows down again in the first unravelling passage to keep us on tenterhooks, but speeds up naturally, almost despite itself, as the impatience to tell the news mounts. The breath before the last phrase is almost swallowed in anticipation and with the affirmative joy of the news in the last phrase, Aggie almost throws the bow in exuberation. This causes a brilliant energetic sound that, I think at the time, could sing for Europe at the end of a long war. In the closing bars, with the sense of relief and relaxation, Aggie executes a delicious diminuendo and rallentando. How she does it, I don’t know. I think perhaps it does her. She takes her bow off the string gently and sits in silence. We sit in silence with her. With Aggie the story teller and the little girl in the story Aggie told.

Aggie the cellist is nowhere to be seen.

Cellos and Chateauneuf

2010-10-01T18:13:00.001+02:00

The drive to Gigondas is green and bronze, the hard summer having relaxed in to Autumn. As I enter Rhone wine country, white letters on the slopes spell out 'VACQUEYRAS ET SES VINS', in an unapologetic mockery of the Hollywood sign. A smaller announcement on the road et the start of the village asks us to please take care at harvest time. 'Prudence s'il vous plaît. Vendange.' Presumably it means of the slow moving trucks piled high with grapes, but then I realize there is an emptiness to the request and I can't tell what is missing.

When I coast up the stony drive of the chateau and park amidst the harvest paraphenalia I am thinking L has been in a good mood of late. Though he says he will not really be able to tell until spring, he is ecstatic about this year's harvest. In fact, last week he said to me 'This is my year'. I am touched that, even at the busiest time in a wine maker's calender, L still makes room for our hour together.

We are working on a Beethoven clarinet trio he is playing with his son and a friend. Like a painter having worked on cast drawing alone, after almost two years working on form, we agree it is exciting to be contemplating the palette at last. One of L's weaknesses, and he knows it, is that he does not listen well. He takes in information, agrees with it passionately and is so convinced that he is applying it that he does not hear that the idea has perhaps not gone further than his brain. I am talking about clay. (As usual we are mixing metaphors like children baking a cake with salt instead of flour and rice instead of sugar.) He plays the opening phrase of the Adagio with the upbeat on a down bow. I suggest otherwise and he starts again. When I have something to respond to I add in the accompaniment the cello gives later to the clarinet. I watch the crescents of Chateauneuf du Pape that are his fingernails lifting, pulling, pushing, spelling out the notes. Our lines touch. The vibrations meld, and then the unison disintegrates as my line falls away. When we stop playing something has changed in his face. The whole of him is listening to Beethoven ringing in the air, and he is loving it.

'Now I see' he says after the pause. 'How music is not like painting, but it IS like wine making. Unlike the painter, we, you and I, are given this great raw material. For the musician it is the score. For me...Well, anyone can chuck me a parcel of great old chateuneuf vines....It's about what you do with it. How you learn about it and listen to it...'

'How, with your hands, you mold it into something people can understand...?' I say.

'And possibly even something great.' he says.

Later, when I am lunching with friends at Domaine de Mourchon, we are talking about the grape picking machines. Ninety percent of wine makers in the area, says H, are using it.

'With its huge rubbery lips.' I say

'And its ability to tickle and tease the fruit from the vine...' says H. 'But seriously, it is simply much much more cost efficient and noone can prove there is a difference in quality'.

'And if you had just, as I have' says his wife, K , 'spent three hours at five in the morning filling in five pages of forms for each one of the twenty pickers who have just worked for you for three hours....'

What was missing in the landscape, I realize, was hands. Also, hats bobbing in and out of the vines. Pickers' picnics at midday at the side of the road.... But is that all just silly romance? Is being sentimental about the season of people crouched down for hours doing back breaking work like saying I will not play off a score that has been printed out by a computer programmer and not written by a musician's hand? I guess the new vintage will tell. Meanwhile, I am glad that cellists have not quite yet been replaced by rubbery lipped machines.

The shrinking endpin.

2010-09-24T17:48:00.012+02:00

I walk in to the audition hall with my cello. I pull the end pin out as far as it will go, tighten the screw and stick the spike in to the maple wood floor. I hear some rustling in the third row of the stalls. I think briefly about Martin Finn whom I love. I never really know how to start so I just put my bow on the string and pull. The audition ‘accompanist’ catches me up imperceptibly, brilliantly, and we are off, taking a lugubrious route through Schubert’s arpeggione sonata.
To the seventeen year old me, this classical sonata for the six stringed instrument rather like the viola de gamba is simply a page full of yummy cello tunes in which I can show off my new-found chocolaty sound, not to mention my spanking new figure-of-eight bow changes. I play a note and love it until I am satisfied that it is beautiful and atmospheric and full of character, and then I move on (with the help of my Rolls Royce bow change) to the next one. Even though I am a teenager with short spiky hair dyed blue who loves to go wild on the dance floor (particularly to earthy African music), on the cello, neither rhythm, pulse nor meter are an issue. Not even tempo is an issue. Cello playing, as far as I understand it, is all about sound. Gorgeous, sexy sound!
Towards the end of the exposition I am interrupted by the tinkle of a bell, perfectly in tune with the piano, that signals the judges for the award have heard enough. Shame, I think, as I have a very special colour up my sleeve for the development. A sort of gossamer purple. Anyway, I have certainly made some beautiful sounds in the first half and am pretty sure they will hand over the dosh.
‘Why are you playing it at such a slow tempo?’ says the woman with the bobbed haircut, lowering her spectacles and pushing a sheet of paper to the side. ‘And what about the rhythm?’
I sit in silence. I have no answer to the judge’s question.
‘OK, thank you Miss Phillips’ says the judge. ‘Could you tell the next candidate we are ready?’
The first clue I find to the answer to the judge’s question is five years later when I realize that each time I feel anxious before or during a concert, I pull the endpin out just a little longer in the hope I will feel more in control. And then I feel even less connected. It takes me another twenty-five to figure out the rest.

The endpin started out life as a cushion on which to rest a bass instrument and thus relieve the strain on the classical pantalooned knee. In 1830 it morphed in to a wooden peg a few inches long which allowed the Belgian cellist Adrien Servais to rest his cello more comfortably against his body. (On whether this became necessary because of the size of his Stradivarius or his increasing paunch, views differ). Not everyone adopted it, but it did give women the choice to give up side saddle playing, and the Portuguese beauty Guilhermina Suggia (with her flowing scarlet robe as painted by Augustus John) the opportunity, half a century later, to become the girl cellist’s first heroine. The endpin’s heyday surely came when the French cellist Paul Tortelier invented the bent model adopted by Rostropovitch, with the cello jutting out from his chest like a table, so much so that one almost expected to see a napkin tucked into his dress shirt. Nowadays, with so many cellists straddling modern and period styles, playing with the cello cradled between their knees one day and supported by an endpin the next, the long endpin craze seems to have subsided and a mid-length support is back in fashion.
As I see it, there is a musical parallel with this journey from short to long endpin and back to middling. This journey is from the cello playing a fundamentally rhythmic and harmonic (vertical) rôle in the baroque and classical eras, to a melodic (horizontal) one in the romantic era. In other words, the reason that endpin length increased was a direct result of the increase in long melodic lines in the cellist’s, especially the solo cellist’s, repertoire. But what of the ‘modern’ high endpinned cellist playing a Haydn bass line in a symphony, or indeed Schubert’s arpeggione sonata? Is it surprising (not, of course, that everyone was as extreme as that blue-haired cellist) that the era of the high endpin was also the era of baroque and classical repertoire being played so often in a slow, lugubrious manner, lacking a sense of harmonic rhythm or driving pulse? Was everyone struggling like me?
I started playing the baroque and classical cello in the mid nineties, sort of by accident, because it was becoming apparent that if I did not, I would be locked out of the repertoire I loved more and more: Haydn and Mozart symphonies, Bach cantatas, the Passions. Audiences and concert halls, and even film makers (Tous Les Matins du Monde was THE soundtrack at the time) were becoming increasingly interested by and demanding of the gutsy folksy sound that was (re-)emerging, and period instrument groups were on the up. As soon as I was comfortable with cradling the cello with my calfs I found answers. I changed from being a nervous pulseless perfectionist who wouldn’t play anything until I had practiced it for months, to someone ‘bien dans sa peau’ on stage, risk-taking, and as spontaneous as any folk musician. The main reason for this change was a feeling of abandon as my arm swung around round my torso and back.
Think of any folk culture that has stringed instruments - Indian, folk, jazz, gypsy. The violinists all hold their instruments low on the body and angled downwards to get the optimum connection to the arm’s natural swing round the torso and therefore the rhythm and the harmony. I was not far off when I realized that my desire for more control in concerts was making me want to put my endpin higher and higher. What I had yet to realize was that there was something that went hand in hand with control, and that was abandon.

Chiaroscuro

2010-09-21T16:42:00.007+02:00

A is a nine year old book worm who wants to be a writer when she grows up. Even though she lives in a paradise vineyard in Provence, every time I see her she is curled up on a couch or crouched in a corner, her knees drawn up to her chest, escaping to somewhere else. Usually, I fear, platform nine and three quarters. Once a week I wrench her away from her stories. She drags her cello out of its case and starts to play for me, her eyes still lingering on the book abandoned mid-chapter. It takes a while for A to emerge from the world contained within her beloved pages to the world of bouncing bows and clapping, but we usually get there in the end.
Last week A pulled out a little piece of Lully arranged for cello duet and placed it on the stand for us. The music sauntered along nicely as we played, with pretty thirds and sixths shifting between parts like layers of silky pinks and purples. At about the mid point there was a long and painful chord with a flattened sixth that had the potential to tug briefly at the corseted gut before being resolved. However, when we played it there was no tension. It was time, I thought, to see if we could make the connection between Harry Potter and the intrigue that might have been occurring in Versailles on the day Lully wrote his air.
First of all we dressed up. Although neither of our knowledge of Louis X1V’s designers was intimate, we donned, in our imagination, powdery wigs, corsets, hooped skirts and shoes with bows and, as the music unfolded, we tried to imagine what was happening. Was someone opening a door here, or crossing the floor there? What were they feeling? In love? Hesitant? Proud? Haughty even? Who was the mystery guest and what was their relationship? How was she ushered in? Bar by bar we tried to get inside the gestures of the baroque story. Then came the bar with the flattened sixth.
‘What is happening now?’ I asked.
There was a pause.
‘I don’t know’ said A.
‘Is there anything different about this bar?’ I asked
‘I don’t know’ said A.
Whether or not it was a result of the (recently discussed in the Guardian) fear children have apparently developed in French schools of giving the ‘wrong’ answer or not, it took a very long time for us to establish that something had changed, that the feelings here were different, that we actually felt differently in our bodies. Uncomfortable, unresolved. We played the chord again.
‘There is a memory…’ said A at last.
‘Is it a painful memory?’ I asked.’ If so, of what?’
I asked A what it was that she liked about the story she was reading, or indeed any story. Was there not some kind of painful, or challenging moment, I asked, in every story that made the development and the resolution so satisfying? Would she really want to read a story that went ‘One sunny day the happy girl walked along the beautiful sunlit road and met a very nice boy and they lived blissfully ever after’ or, likewise, ‘The nasty ugly man sniffed the hideous air in the run down city, drew his sword and killed the cat. The end.’
‘She’s been here before…’ said A.
We were getting somewhere, I thought.
‘…When she was a little girl…’
Time was up and lunch was on the table in the sunlit vines. Glasses of the house' own rosé glistened, salad was dressed with home made olive oil.
‘It’s a beginning, A.’ I said. ‘Can you see, though, how important that bar is? that there is no relaxation in this piece without the tension in that bar? no light without shadow? And that there is no right answer, just how you feel?’
‘Yes' said A. 'Can I go back to my book now?’

Vendange

2010-09-16T18:41:00.001+02:00

'I joke with my friends' L told me once me at the end of a lesson as he stuffed forty euros into my hand and filled the boot of my Mini with St Joseph and Condrieu for my petrol money, 'and say you are my bio dynamic cello teacher!'

Driving through Caromb, Beaumes de Venise and Vacqueyras this week to teach the great bio-dynamic wine-maker in Gigondas, I realized I was enjoying the enforced slow pace for once. This was because most of the big white caravans from Holland and Belgium have now been replaced on the roads with little red trucks carrying mountains of priceless red and golden globelets. I idled away watching the sun shine on the grapes that, having been picked by patient hands under the September sun, would be transformed into some of the best wine in the world. And as I idled I got to thinking yet again about L's comment....

With the lack of response in France to the way I approach music (confirmed recently in the British press) and with my passion for making and teaching it, and the enthusiastic response I always seem to get from doing that, I have been thinking internet coaching then book, video magazine then video coaching then internet book, book with video coaching then internet kindle book....I have been thinking a lot. A visit last weekend from the wonderful Mig helped clarify things. Teaching Mig helped me see that teaching without actual touch is hard, and I could not do the internet coaching without at least having a model, and that perhaps I should write the book first.....?

Most days this week, I made cups of tea, packed paintings, went to the post office, veg shop and boulangerie. I called friends, went for a run and had a long shower then had another cup of tea. Finally today, having achieved most of these tasks and still with time on my hands, I sat down, opened Scrivener and created a new project.

Working title: The Bio-dynamic Cello.

Another mountain to climb? Bey hey, it's a new day!

Turkey

2010-08-22T19:14:00.001+02:00

Here's a piece I wrote on my experience in Turkey.

I am sitting in a café on Urgup’s main street. The humous here is somewhat overloaded with pomegranate molasses but it doesn’t seem to matter. The Efes beer is cool, ‘The Smile on your Face’ is playing at the bar, and I am looking back on the work we have been doing during the last ten days here in Cappadocia. It’s hard to believe it was only a week ago.

Monday.

They say I circle around you.
Nonsense. I circle around me.
Rumi.

It is my first cello class. Dotted around the room are eleven cellists aged between ten and twenty-one, from beginner to graduate level. Many of them do not meet my eye. One is cowering behind his instrument. Another is playing a muscled version of Haydn’s D major concerto to the wall. Yet another rolls up her sleeve and flexes her biceps in a show of cello prowess. Clearly I am not alone in feeling nervous.

We create a circle. In the first exercise I ask the group to stand and let their arms swing around their torsos in response to the torso’s movement around the spine’s axis. This, I point out, is the natural movement we make when we walk, and also the root of the bow-swing.

‘Look ze waves!’ I say, quoting my late Hungarian mentor, Sandor Vègh, sketching, with one hand, an impression of his six wobbling chins whilst with the other the swell of the ocean. ‘Avery sing in nature is cuuuuuuuuuurved!’

There is silence. I wonder if, during the following week, I will manage to communicate anything of my circular approach to cello playing in my non-existent Turkish. On this first day I very much doubt it.

That night, the student concert takes place in a cave that serves as a tea-house and sometime concert venue. The name, Sakli Vadi, means Hidden Valley and indeed the venue feels so secret it seems unlikely that anyone will come. However, while Ellen choreographs the last of the student’s rehearsals, local families arrive and set up picnics. Other visitors stand and enjoy the spicy sausage sandwiches and Cappadocian red wine that are for sale at the entrance to the cave. Two of the faculty waltz on the sandy cave floor as the violists play their Strauss dance. Exhausted from a long opera season back in England I lounge in a hammock strung from two apricot trees. Sounds of a quartet for Ud and string trio, Handel’s water music and Gershwin’s Summertime whirl round the curved enclosure before rising up into the purple evening sky. Candles are lit and the place becomes an alchemical grotto, framing the music and yet setting it free. I contemplate my inevitable return to square concert halls, not to mention flat beds and, without the usual warning of tightness in the throat, I shed the first of many tears.

Tuesday

Drumsound rises on the air,
its throb, my heart.
Rumi

In the second cello class we work on the connection between breath and bowing. Inhaling deeply, filling their rib cages with air, the students observe how their arms can float weightlessly up and away from their bodies on the in-breath. I immediately translate this into the movement of the bow arm. The sound in the room opens up and doubles. Subsequent exercises bring smiles of recognition. Nervousness is replaced with ease. Our hearts start to open.

That afternoon the faculty concert takes place in the caravanserai ‘Saruhan’, an immaculately renovated thirteenth century stopping place for camel trains along the silk road. Before the concert I sit for a while in meditation just off the courtyard. In the quiet concentration it is as if this space has been prepared for us. Only afterwards do I find out that it is the home of the Mevlevi sect, inspired by one of my great heroes, Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi.

When the concert ends we stay for Sema, the Mevlevi whirling dervish ceremony. After a eulogy to the prophet and a drum sound symbolising the divine order of the Creator, there follows a simple improvisation on the reed flute that, I discover later, represents the first, the Divine breath. At this point I know nothing of the sect, nor of their whirling. I do not know that their turning prayer is based on what they believe and indeed contemporary science has found to be the fundamental condition of our existence, to revolve. The skirts start to twirl, the arms float weightlessly up away from their rib-cages and the dervishes start to spin, orbiting around their heart centre.

Wedensday

Every moment and place says
‘Put this design in your carpet!
Rumi.

It is day three and in class we are working on the opening phrase of Beethoven’s A major cello sonata. Despite her obvious vivaciousness my student plays with a flat sound. When I ask her to sing the phrase she does so with one vowel and no consonants. ‘Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah’ When I ask her to sing it as if speaking it she does so in Sol Fège: ‘La Mi Fa, Do Mi Re Do Re Sol La Sol….’ When I ask her, as a jazzer would scat, to draw on the sounds of her own language to find consonants and vowels both hard and soft, long and short to express the contours and percussion of the phrase, she sings. ‘La di lohm? la ri do loh di la dah dihm’. Now she is speaking a language we all understand.

The evening event is a jam session held at the adopted headquarters of Klassik Keyifler, the rooftop of Nuray’s elegant ‘Ziggy café’. Below us in town, carpet and dried fruit sellers pack up. Stray cats pad over cobbles. A wedding party hoots and wails. On our table a series of delicate meze arrive including okra, the pulp of wood-fired aubergine and a creamy bean purée. A Turkish jazz singer, an Ud player on guitar, and a kid from the viola class on the electric piano waft through some jazz standards. The food, aromatic rather than spicy is a perfect accompaniment. The next course consists of liver and pastrami that, Ellen informs me, would originally have been cured in the midday heat under a horse’s saddle, and just as the meat arrives at our table, so it does in the musical feast, with Anatolian folk tunes. These are soloed heartily at first by Guc Basar Gulle. Then by Esin Gunduz. Then by the chap at the next table, and then by all the students. On that rooftop in the early hours of the Anatolian morning, the language of music and indeed the Turkish language, seem so intimate. ‘Iyi Aksamlar’ I say to Nuray as we leave. At three o’clock I can almost taste the words for Good Evening in my mouth along with the smoky remnant of aubergine.

Thursday

Any movement or sound is a profession of faith,
As the millstone grinding is explaining how it believes in the river.
Rumi

‘Oranges and lemons from the Mediterranean are stored at the perfect temperature in the local caves here’ Suha, our host at Esbelli Evi informs us.
As we sip their juice over breakfast a colleague asks me what ‘school of playing’ I come from. I look at the curve of the cave wall behind him, and the delicately drawn lines of strata hinting at its history. My history, or ‘school’, feels more like this sandstone than any institution or method. In my class that day, I think, I will doubtless quote Julius Levine (who coached Ellen and I in the US), Steven Isserlis, Timothy Eddy, Sandor Vegh, Andras Schiff, or Sascha Schneider. Or quote any one of them quoting Pablo Casals. I might ask one of them to teach me an Anatolian tune that may have been recorded by Bela Bartok in the fifties, transformed in to one of his string quartets and played by Sandor Vegh to Bartok himself in Budapest or at Casals’ festival in Prades. I will yet again talk about rainbows and waves, tree trunks and wings, gurgling streams and twittering birds, volcanos and natural springs, searching within the images to find the way to move a hand or shape a phrase. The ‘school’ I come from, it occurs to me, does not belong to any country, creed or culture. It is all around us, in nature.

After my spontaneous and almost incomprehensible lesson in Turkish microtones with Guc, we pile in the bus for the day’s concert in Goreme Open Air Museum. At the entrance I resist what one of my students describes as ‘bubble gum ice cream’ in favour of melon juice and we make our way to the cave church where the students will play solo Bach. Unfortunately Husam could not get permission this year to play in any of the many churches that house the Byzantine frescoes. He was particularly keen on Tokali Kilise in whose chambers are painted the account of the life of Christ in sea greens, powdery blues and ochres, and over whose entrance is painted the transfiguration. When we visit I can see why. As if planting a seed of hope for next year, Esin sings a few notes, and all of us imagine phrases of Bach strung between the painted pillars and swelling under the vaults.

Friday

We rarely hear the inward music,
But we’re all dancing to it nevertheless
Rumi

The day of our penultimate cello class has arrived. Over my penultimate salad of feta cheese, hot peppers, lettuce, cucumber and yoghurt in Club Urgup’s restaurant, Ellen has been telling me more about the dervishes. I am particularly interested in the hat they wear being the ‘tombstone of the ego’, and in their hand positions, the right hand turned up towards the sky to receive God’s gifts, and the left turned down towards the earth to deliver them back. Inhalation and exhalation. Inspiration and expression. My students are not the only ones making new connections.

I walk across the hot astro-turf, past the loungers and the signs to the swimming pool. I descend the stairs to the poorly lit and barely air-conditioned basement rooms filled this week, not with conferences or business meetings, but with children making music. I have a spring in my step as I enter the room and see eleven people arranging the chairs in the circle. Eleven people whom, at the beginning of the week, all seemed to be called variations on an Italian designer, but whom I have now come to know as Gulce, Gokce, Gokhan, Pinar, Pelin, Hazel…

Today I ask the students to voice thoughts they have had recently whilst performing. ‘How beautiful this music is!’ says the first. ‘How nice the cello feels!’ says the second. ‘Same.’ says the third. Then the fourth cellist speaks: ‘During my performance yesterday I thought: My teacher has just taught me this bow stroke. He is sitting over there and must be angry because I can’t do it yet. I am a failure’ There is a silence. ‘My vibrato is pathetic’ says the first. ‘I wish my mum could see me play’ says the third. ‘I am ashamed of my sweating brow’ says the seventh. When everyone has spoken I ask whether thought serves merely a distraction from hearing and following our inner music. I leave the question in the air.

That night we are back in Sakla Vadi for the last concert. On the stage under the arc of the cave, violinists and violists squat on scatter cushions and ledges, tandoor pots huddle in every nook, and Turkish teapots hang from the ceiling. I am leading the cello ensemble in an arrangement of Dido’s lament. I look at the smiling faces encircling me, the softened shoulders and the feet planted on the floor of the stage. We draw a breath together, and play.

Saturday

Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,
How it sings of separation.
Rumi

Saturday was to be a day of rest but, inspired by how Ellen ‘closed’ her violin class, I ask the cellists to gather one last time. Instead of taking up separate poses and playing concerti excerpts, the eleven students are sitting in a circle, breathing calmly when I arrive. When I ask them what it is they would like to take away with them from the week’s work, the boy who hid behind his cello says he has learned to sit proud. The youngest member of the group says she thought classical music was deadly serious but all week she has seen people laughing so she has changed her mind. Another says she has realized how powerful the support of a group can be. Most of them say, apparently with some relief, that they have learned that there is a more natural approach to playing. I, myself, find it difficult to speak at all, but I hope I convey how deeply their openness and humour, and their willingness to explore what essentially are new ideas to them, have touched me.

Tomorrow I leave my colleagues and students, and we leave Cappadocia. In the bar 'The smile on your face', is still playing on the stereo, but now it has a twist. The muezzin has started up in exactly the same tonality. ‘You’ll catch me whenever I fall.’ sings Ronan Keating, and the muezzin rises on the syllable ‘Al-‘ before tumbling in a series of minor intervals on‘-Lah’. ‘It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart.’ sings Keating, and the muezzin holds ‘bar’ right to its guttal end over the broken guitar chords. ‘Without saying a word you can light up the dark.’ The caller twirls his micro-tones in and around Keating, transforming the East-West mix into one urgent call to love and prayer under the stars. As I listen I realize that, in Klasik Keyifler, Ellen and Husam have created something absolutely unique. With their joint knowledge of Turkish culture, history and geology, and their passion for the International language of music, there is no watering down here. This is not a cross-over festival. This is a real attempt at listening to and understanding each culture, finding what binds and separates them and, just like the muezzin and the ballad singer, allowing each to sing its song fully and passionately side by side.

Ellen Jewett is an internationally acclaimed violinist and teacher, and member of the American-based Audubon quartet. Husam Suleymangil has worked for 30 years in the tourist sector guiding for archeological projects, film crews, educational, family and business tours throughout Turkey.

Klassik Keyifler holds courses in Turkey from June through September.
http://www.klasikkeyifler.org/

Croissants and a surprise visitor

2010-08-22T15:55:00.001+02:00

figs

2010-07-29T08:55:00.001+02:00

Figs from the tree (a few via a still life)
roasted with garrigues honey, balsamic vinegar and thyme.

Potager du Peintre 3

2010-07-28T14:33:00.001+02:00

A noir de crimée tomato from our vine, crusty bread, mourchon oilive oil, salt, pepper. C'est tout.

or, our crop of aubergines burnt on the barbecue and transformed into our favourite Turkish recipes from Ziggy's

It's good to be home, if briefly!

The muezzin and the smile on your face

2010-07-15T18:39:00.003+02:00

Downtown Urgup. I have a free evening and we choose to try out a new place for supper. It is a nice venue in a garden with the usual exquisite soft stone cave walls that make me wonder why we ever decided to make our dwellings from straight lines. Plasterboard seems like another universe.

I start recounting my class about curved notes to Julian, quoting first Sandor Vègh ('Avery note is carved') and then one of the students who explained to me that they all learn Russian method (which, as far as I can see is locked elbows and bemuscled shoulders) , and that is why 'all the cellists in Turkey suffer from shoulder problems'. I have a running joke in the class about Dutch landscape as in FLAT (uncurved) notes, but I realize that most of these Turkish students probably have no clue about Holland or how uncurvy it is....

On and on I go about curved this and curved that. Curved concert halls and bedrooms, curved surfaces of tress, bodies, bows and cellos. The local Efes beer is refreshing. However, over the too-sweet houmous (too much pomegranate syrup?) I start to regret that we didn't go to the incomparable Ziggy café for the third time in a row, where the aubergine is deliciously smoked, the aromatics - dill, mint and parsley - perfectly judged, the bean purées like butter and where they have one of my favourite vegetables, okra...

I am struggling. I am at once trying to let go of my culinary disappointment and blot out fortissimo twang of the tourists at the bar when, suddenly, I know why we are there. 'The smile on your face', is playing on the radio. The muezzin starts up not only in the same key and the same pulse but the same feel as the old favourite. When the song has a lull the muezzin embellishes; when the song is busily letting me 'know that he needs me' it lays back with just a hum; when it rises up in an arc of extatic love, so does the muezzin. 'There's a truth in your eyes, saying you'll never leave me...'

And than the song modulates and the muezzin is left behind, calling the population of Urgup away from their cafés and to prayer. Lonely. Mildly unnoticed. We pay our bill and head up to Ziggys where we hear Anatolian folk songs (all part of this extraordinary festival ) and where I eat smoked aubergine to take the taste a way of the houmous. We bask in jazz tunes and micro-tones under a starlit sky till the early hours.

However, I will never forget what was said, between the muezzin's heart and those of Paul Overstreetand Don Schlitz.

cappadocia

2010-07-13T19:10:00.000+02:00

Bach in eleventh century cave chapels, whirling dervishes and Brahms in a thirteenth century caravanserai on the silk route, breathing and bowing classes run by me (now with additional references to whirling dervishes), Anatolian folk songs in a Turkish café, chamber music with string quartet and ud, a boutique cave house all for the two of us and a balloon ride....This is Klasik Keyifler 2010!

A nightmare and Midsummer Night's Dream

2010-06-19T16:09:00.027+02:00

When you walk out of our production of Midsummer Night's Dream you arrive in a fairy lit flower garden full of poppies, Fantin Latour roses, peonies and alliums. That is, if it is not pouring with rain when you probably choose to disappear under your umbrella.

We did have one glorious day in England. Luckily for me it was my one day off with Julian.

My husband has spent the last few months dealing with the proofing, delivery, signing and posting of his book. I have rarely seen him so worn and stressed. The delay in the printing process meant that the fork lift truck arrived at the foot of the Mont Ventoux several days AFTER I left on tour for two months, and not before. Luckily it was the day before they decided to close our beloved 'road in Provence' for ugly tarmacking. Luckily it was not raining. Unluckily Julian was alone. Despite strict instructions in capital letters in red from the printers that the truck should be equipped with lift and trolley and anything else a poor chap might need in the middle of nowhere to unload three thousand books, the truck arrived with neither lift nor trolley, or indeed anything useful at all. Julian was forced to take every box down by hand and walk it to the gallery. He became so exhausted in the process that he fell trying to save one, gashing his leg on something sharp and metal that belonged to the forkless liftless truck. He rushed himself to the 'Urgences' at Carpentras hospital where he ended up with six stitches before coming back to clean up the blood and face the next step.

The following week was spent in a vigil of dawn till midnight label-checking and printing, packing and visits to the post office. A few home grown lettuces were rescued from the mistral, a bean pole or two erected to try and save our small crop, but that was about it. It seems there wasn't even time to drink. By which, of course, I mean, Côtes du Rhône.

The first feedback arrived on my iphone while we were driving. 'It is beautiful, stunning but.....' Oh no, we thought. I had flown home for a day and we were driving from Bedoin to Garsington together in search of some relaxation after the great book- birthing. 'But there is a gash in the paper from page forty eight through to page sixty.' We looked out on to the rain soaked 'Autoroute du Soleil' and our hearts sank. Was it a whole batch or a one-off? The hours before the next lot of feedback that confirmed the latter were long.

Luckily we had some distraction in the form of a tasting at David Clark's bijoux winery. A shy young man, David had recently been featured on the BBC which had caused his modest organic one-man show to explode with success and there were lovely echoes of Julian's New York Times moment in the air as the two men exchanged gifts: An unlabeled 2008 Côtes de Nuits and a book of paintings. Arriving finally at my B and B in Garsington ten hours later, we devoured the Burgundy with relish.

Five days later Julian had been to three operas and posted forty more books (the latter not without driving seventy miles in search of a real post office as opposed to a counter in WH Smith). We had walked in his childhood playground in the beech-woods of the Chiltern hills and dined at three gastro-pubs. He descended the stairs of the makeshift auditorium in to the garden of fairy lights, poppies, Fantin Latour roses, peonies and alliums. He was humming the chromatic tune of Britten's exquisite setting of 'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows' (which he will doubtless hum for the next three months) and a tear was in his eye.

We did it!

Now the European comments are starting to pour in.

I have just received the most perfect art book ever! sober, splendid, huge and marvellous photography , the brush strokes are vivid...

BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL BEAUUUUUUTIFULL!!!!!!!

La peinture de l'air dans les paysages et la pénombre qui étreint la surface tangible des choses.

The book has arrived and I am very much enjoying soaking up the ambience, countryside, weather, seasons, as portrayed in the wonderful pictures.

Thank you - a lot of hard work bearing lovely fruit.

I am so happy to have this book in my hands now! It literally exudes all the love and energy put into it...it is absolutely precious!

There is a glowing write-up on Making a Mark.

And now it is pouring with rain again in Garsington. My strings feel like knicker elastic, my bow like strands of damp spaghetti, my cello like an old crate. In the pit we are wearing thermals and hand warmers. Hot water bottles and old tartan blankets rest on our laps behind cellos and underneath bassoons. Meanwhile, back in Provence, the sun is shining. Julian has taken his own stitches out with the help of some vodka. Garden salads are being eaten from the potager, and Julian is at last harvesting his own beetroot, turnips and potatoes, and breathing, no doubt, a sigh of relief.

Having made this beautiful book, surely, is a dream come true. Almost, indeed, on a midsummer's night.

A blackbird sings at Garsington

2010-06-03T16:52:00.000+02:00

I am walking through the formal gardens, on my way to pit for the first night of Figaro at Garsington manor. Giant poppies bob their welcome. Rose petals shimmer in the first summer light. Penguin suits and sequinned ball-gowns mill around picnic hampers on the distant lawn. The breathy sound of a flute emerges from the pit. In the big tree above my head a blackbird is warming up for her debut.

Although it is a Mozart night, everyone in the pit is practicing Britten for the rehearsal tomorrow. A violist and I are playing the same hysterical sequence, our hands flying up to the Gods of the fingerboard at high speed. We are three semiquavers apart and creating excruciating dissonances. Another violist is doing long calm bows, centering herself. I take her lead, it being far more suitable preparation for one of the most sublime pieces of music ever written.

The pit and the stalls are full. The conductor arrives. The continuo cello and fortepiano players take their places. Jane is wearing outrageous lime green earrings and Gareth shoves his jeans underneath the piano for a fast getaway. 'We're off to Alton Towers with the kids at the crack of dawn' he explains. The continuo team and the conductor have a mini rehearsal amidst the screaming Britten fragments. ‘You lead that bit’ says Dougie. ‘I don’t know what Gareth will think of that’ says Jane. Gareth is doing something on his iphone. ‘Could Jane lead that bit, Gareth?’ says Dougie. ‘Sure’ says Gareth,…

The lights go down. A robin has joined the blackbird. An elaborately dressed character bangs a stave on the stage as a way to get the punters to shut up, so we can play really pianissimo. And we’re off. Not to Alton towers but to somewhere as close as you can get, I imagine, to heaven.

And we are dancing. The speed, arc, bounce and swing of our bows are one. We are one with the bending of the conductor’s knees and the dancing of his feet. The night is drawing in and the magic is encircling us. Susanna sings her aria into the indigo sky. She executes a delicious diminuendo and as her voice trails off, the blackbird seizes her moment. She flourishes, pauses and flourishes again, pitches a high dominant perfectly in tune with the aria and shimmies down back to the tonic, diminuendoing all the while.

Then there is silence. Then there is clapping and a glass of champagne. And then there is sleep filled with birdsong.

books 'n roses

2010-05-30T00:37:00.001+02:00

The peintre relaxes very occasionally, so the local gossip goes, in his potager. That is when he is not painting, feeding himself and three cats, emptying a garage and a gallery, building a ramp and preparing eight hundred packages for the book delivery on its belated (through no fault of his own) delivery date, checking data, preparing labels, printing, addressing, sticking, signing and probably humming. All on his lonesome.

I went home for three days. The books were supposed to be there. We were supposed to be labelling, sticking, licking, posting, printing, packing. A deux. Instead, as they were not, I smelled the roses, and planted the broccoli family. I prepared elderflower champagne for four day fermentation. We walked, ran, lunched....It felt like three weeks' holiday.

Back in grey rainy Garsington my beloved shows me his ramp and packaging on skype. I make admiring noises. The elderflower champagne is over-fermenting.

roses

2010-05-22T22:14:00.000+02:00

Two days at home, just in time to see the roses bloom. The mistral destroyed much of the potager du peintre, so I have been nursing it.

giovanni arte

2010-05-10T19:23:00.000+02:00

Apparently...

You can still see the film arte made of our Don Giovanni here

A postcard sandwich.

2010-05-07T13:16:00.005+02:00

We have had the most divine breakfast at our potter and children's book writer friends, David and Sarah Garland. It consists of home made granola with stem ginger and apple compote, a curly kipper and café au lait, all served on our favourite pottery. So harmonious is it all that the Garland mark and the curly kipper practically do a salsa on the plate. Then, under a fleece of cloud and past sun-yellow fields of rape, we drive back to Frome, to the conference room complete with sandwiches and mini-bar, with Delia and Jamie's cookery books lining the shelves, that has been reserved for us at Butler Tanner and Dennis.

The printers have been hard at work during the night, and there is a new pass to sign off, plus two new sheets to see. My favourite of Julian's paintings, possibly ever, seems to sparkle. The green bowl in the pomegranate painting is perfect for the first time and the rougets positively zing! The book is going to be magnificent!!!

Meanwhile, further down the production line, the Glyndebourne opera programme, with its David Hockney cover, is being pummeled and blown, strimmed, folded, stroked, punched, glued, threaded and bound, just like Julian's book will be next week. The brochure travels down miles of conveyor belt, its various bits drying and readying themselves for the next treatment. Overhead in floppy pipes the wasted rakes, billys and hansels whizz off across the ceiling to the recycling bin, just like bits of leek and mackerel and wheatfield will do on Monday.

I resist the urge to rub out the name of a certain person on the orchestra list on the back page.

'Next up' says our rep 'The Garsington brochure!'

So there goes Julian's book, sandwiched in between my ex and my current employers' opera programmes! On it's way to Bedoin, and then, perhaps, even, to a bookstore near you!

First Pass

2010-05-06T17:13:00.005+02:00

There are bluebells. There is plump wild garlic and exquisite spring lamb at the Wheatsheaf. On one of the surrounding tables in the cool modern dining room, four lads who might, ten years ago, have been downing lagers with an over-sized curry, are talking about beetroot over delicate English salad leaves. On another, three women are sharing a bottle of white wine and discussing birdsong. On the third (for there are only four) a couple are too blissfully happy or pissed, or both, to do anything but hold hands while they digest the fine fayre. As usual, we move from analyzing our food and the ambiance (pretty much ten out of ten, we agree for once, apart from the square plates) to dreaming of our own coffee shop cum gallerybistro/ gastro pub with rooms. There is a Farrow and Ball bedroom in 'The Shed' with a cowbell key, Egyptian cotton sheetage, complimentary organic Fairtrade tea, a tuckbox and a lambskin cushion that is almost as good as having our beloved Manon in bed with us.... but Julian is nervous. Tomorrow is press day!

Thankfully Butler, Tanner and Dennis start late due to a system something or other, so we can enjoy an early morning walk and salmon and scrambled duck eggs. We check emails outside the inn in a light rain. We have breakfast and drive to Frome through dingly dells that make us discuss the possibility of moving back to our home country. There is a nice bookshop in which we are assured that the printers we have chosen are sound fellows....

And then, suddenly, there we are at the first pass. Julian's paintings sliding out all clean and shiny and multiduninous on huge sheets. All on their own. All grown-up.

It occurs to me that up until now Julian has, possibly for the first time, been feeling what we musicians feel before we go on stage. He tilts his head. Examines two rougets, a leek and a lavender field.

'Looks great' he says at last, happy as a spring lamb.

purple asparagus

2010-05-03T09:07:00.000+02:00

The blue season is fading. The irises are bowing down with their lanky weight and shriveling up as the touch the ground. Poppies are looming up on the banks and soon it will be sweet honey broom again. As the asparagus fattens and strawberries prepare to make way for cherries, a trip to Les Halles in Avignon reveals a last burst of blue, this extraordinary amethyst-coloured asparagus, just in time for guinea fowl with morilles and spring vegetables for our favourite cooks.

irises

2010-05-01T19:28:00.004+02:00

Bedoin market

2010-04-26T18:54:00.004+02:00

The asparagus seller had some company today in Bedoin market. She introduced me to Elliot, then she bundled up some tips (asparagus tips) for 'l'amitié et la fidelité'.

wild iris

2010-04-25T19:26:00.000+02:00

The smell of wild iris. Occitane tried to bottle it. So did Weleda, but there is nothing like the tall elegant ladies that spring up on the banks here, and their scent.

Wedensdays at St Cosme 3

2010-04-23T11:47:00.006+02:00

My student is angry, and rightfully so. With each lesson that passes he has been becoming increasingly furious at the years of his life wasted learning how to play the cello in an uneconomical, unnatural way. A man passionate and knowledgeable about music with little time to spare as he runs one of the finest vineyards in the Rhône valley, he picks up the cello again at mid-life and finds himself with shadows of useless tools which he now has to discard. I suggest that a low elbow is like a kink in the plumbing and therefore means less pressure rather than more arriving at the string. He winces with yet another learned thing he has to forget. I speak about the importance of passive as well as active. He says he wants to kick someone. I mime a pebble skimming on water to explain how an impulse gives way to not one but a series of notes and I see a pained grimace....

The rage is not helping him relax, and is certainly not inspiring him to practice so, for the next week, I suggest taking ten minutes a day just as a meditation with his cello. Minutes in which he puts his resentment aside, along with his judgements on the entire global musical training, and concentrate fully on his breath, or the shift of weight between his two feet when he bows. I leave the chateau.

This week I see the joy once more in his face that has made me love coming every week to Gigondas. It is a joy in which everything we are doing in the room with a cello is connected to everything he is doing with his wine. I leave him with a Djembe on which to practice his new impulsive bouncing bow-arm and he says: 'You know I am becoming a hundred percent bio-dynamic. I have the highest man in bio-dynamic wine making coming this afternoon and I can't wait to see his face when I tell him I have spent the morning doing bio-dynamic cello!'

I leave with my fee, and several bottles of Gigondas.

I then move on to the next vineyard where my dear friend Kate serves her usual al fresco delicacies, I spend some time helping Aggie release her cello shoulder, and Hugo gives me a bottle of Morgon as a special treat.

Sous-chef to the Peintre and
bio-dynamic cello coach in fine vineyards. Suits me very well.

The first seed

2010-04-19T19:28:00.001+02:00

Today is the first of the glorious spring heat. The snow is disappearing fast from the summit of the Ventoux and clusters of cherry blossom bounce like pom-poms on shivering boughs. The variations on green practically quench our thirst.

In a typical Merrow-Smith/Phillips moment, Julian took my months' of slog (horse-poo carting, digging, tugging and raking) to a new level. He made a very fine tilth on three plump beds. Actually not just a very fine tilth but the most beautifully combed and nurtured feathery tilth you are ever likely to see. Then he planted the first seed in the Potager du Peintre.

I think it was a runner bean.

Next came peas and leeks and broad beans and lettuces and radishes.....I am going to try amaranth which came as a seed swap from Laura.

However, what the peintre was most excited about was, of course...

Pasta Primavera

2010-04-17T21:00:00.000+02:00

Five industrial size bags of couch grass later, and with well worked back and thigh muscles, I believe I have a fine tilth on the Potager du Peintre. At least on half of it. I have been working out friends and enemies amongst veg. Most seedlings are up, fed up with being shunted between our heated kitchen floor and the sunny terrace, and waiting to hit center stage in the ex-truffle orchard of Monsieur Chauvet. Meanwhile, thanks to those who started earlier than us (and probably in a greenhouse) we have had the ultimate pasta primavera: Broad beans, peas, bacon, asparagus tips, baby carrots, morels, parsley, tarragon, white summer truffle and a reduced chicken stock. Next time the recipe will be made from our own produce!

Spring harvest

2010-04-16T20:13:00.003+02:00

This has to be my favourite day of the year! Not only did I buy my first peas and broad beans 'du pays' (who needs sugar?), but Sebastian passed by with fresh morel mushrooms. And I mean FRESH. All to be enjoyed alongside a red label chicken, some Grenaille potatoes, baby carrots, some asparagus tips, and a summer truffle, maybe with a little tarragon (knowing Julian) .....oh and then there are the floral smelling gariguette strawberries to enjoy with tomorrow morning's muesli!

La bonne saison est arrivée!

Location Location Location

2010-04-15T22:04:00.000+02:00

It is five years since our last painting and lunch day out at Sormiou, one of the calenques near Marseille. Then it was to celebrate the beginning of a project. Painting number 102 to be precise. Now it is to celebrate the launch of a book of that project. Painting number 1309.

The restaurant was slightly more upmarket this time, though we have yet to graduate from it's bistro to it's restau. proper. Perched on the highest sea cliffs in Europe, looking through huge French windows towards the sea we ate veal and brill and a chocolate tartlet accompanied by a delectable Clos Ste Magdaleine white from one cliff along.

At Sormiou, we were earlier in the season. April not June. This meant that the wild irises and sea-flowers (with all their pudgey leaves of yellow and grey-green, and their medicinal smells) were abundant, bright and aromatic.

First off Julian had to choose a location. Not so easy. Would he go for a revisit of the old location or choose a new one? Would he be in the wind, the sun, or the shade, hidden behind a rock?...

...or there in the cliff path for passers by to gloat at.

Phrases such as 'I'm such a fraud' or 'I wish I knew less/ more /nothing' or 'I wish I was thirteen again' popped out...

..and then came the exquisite silence of work and reverence and (as Julian's friend Gary puts it in his lovely introduction to the book) reveling. OK, there was the occasional hum from the artist of the Dexter theme tune (much more bearable plein- air than in our kitchen) or squeal from a passing kid, or announcement from a briefly passing tour-boat about how this was paradise on earth, but basically there was nothing but the sound of the sea and a delicately swishing brush.

Yes, it is paradise. Paradise by the sea. And it is only 90 minutes from our earthly paradise here at the foot of the Ventoux. And so we return (I won't bore you with the continually overheating engine of our temperamental mini) to a good bottle of St Cosme's basic, an episode of Dexter and bed...

..and I think we will sleep tight with all that sea air and in the knowledge (have we taken it in yet? I wonder) that we have just accomplished a life's dream.

New Growth

2010-04-12T20:59:00.001+02:00

The seedlings are peeking up after a long winter, Julian has been filmed almost in the rain by the BBC for the Occitane garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, and after seven hard months, his book, Postcard from Provence, has finally gone to press! This afternoon I had a final look through the pdf before sending it to the printers (lucky, as a vineyard was called a lavender field on page 47 and a critical subscriber had lost the l in his name) whilst listening to Steven Isserlis play Rachmaninov. Down a floor Julian was painting strawberries, the champagne was chilling in the fridge, a cat was nuzzling into the crook of my elbow. I found myself in floods of tears.

Meanwhile in Paris, I was not walking down the red carpet as the film arte made of our Don Giovanni premiered at the Gaumont tonight, but you can't have it all. I was having a bad hair day when they filmed anyway.

Team work

2010-04-05T19:06:00.002+02:00

Julian is the ideas man and I'm the runner. He's great at starting things and I'm great at finishing them.

'What we really need to do is this...' he will say and, several days, months or even years later, I will hand him the finished project. Sometimes it is no longer relevent or useful. The software is out of date or he's decided on a wooden floor anyway. Sometimes we open a bottle of champagne.

'You should write a blog' he said as I sat, day after day, writing letters to a lost child.

When I have a project, and I always have to have a project, I set myself a minimum requirement of two hours a day in which to honour it. Whatever is happening around me, whether we have visitors or I am playing an opera, or The Peintre needs me, I put in my two hours. In the last four years this has written me a book, sorted out the pictures for Julian's book, cleaned an entire floor's worth of cement encrusted tommettes, made an interminable excel file for all Julians print sales (previously to be found on lists stuck to empty boxes hiding not very well under my desk), learned me a course in Adobe Indesign, pre-designed Julian's book and then designed mine. Now it has dug me a garden.

OK, so I realize I just mentioned the main reason why I have not been posting here. My book. It has really only just grown up to be called a book having been a 'thing' then a 'project' and 'my writing' for so long. At the risk of jinxing myself, I will spill the beans about why. My book is finally finished and is, because of a stroke of crazy good luck, being looked at by a rather swish agent in London. If she says no, we will self publish. Whatever happens, my confidence has been given a boost and is momentarily sky high.

Meanwhile, back down on earth, where people with sky high confidence need to hang out, on the plot today, I saw a dark child in a bright red coat standing in the olive grove. She was very small compared to the trees. Probably more like the size of their fruit. As the snow puffed up clouds in the early evening mistral she walked towards the Potager du Peintre and started to howl. Her parents tried to comfort her. She would not be comforted. I asked if she wanted to see the worms. She gazed at the wriggly thing un-burrowing its way out of the wall I had just made with my spade and stopped crying.

'Oh, what a relief' said the mother. 'We don't know what to do. We've only just got back from India with her and I have no idea how to be a mother!...'

I was reminded of another joint project of ours, not quite finished. I put the worm in the little girl's hand. The little girl looked at it, dropped it, threw her arms wide open and launched herself towards her mother's calves which she encircled.

When I put away my spade, I walked into the house to find Julian delicately, and with warm water, nurturing the seedlings that will grow up one day and become the vegetables in the potager I'd just been digging.

The transhumance passes the potager

2010-04-02T18:58:00.001+02:00

Another day of digging and seed planting. At first, on very little sleep, I was grumpy. More concentrated on the enemy couch grass than the friend worms; listening to the voices in my head and not the oriental sound of the sheep bells and the bird song. Gradually I let go, felt the earth again between my fingers, listened to the song of the universe, and was happy.

Potager du Peintre 2

2010-04-01T19:26:00.000+02:00

The marvelous organic gardneress, Debbie, has been with me today. We have been uncovering the soil for our potager. Having been under cover, under fifteen carloads of horse manure, for eight months, it was a big moment. Debbie rolled the soil into a ball. It worked. Then into a sausage. It crumbled. 'Perfect' she said. 'This is the best soil I have seen in Provence!' And there are worms! Hundreds of happy spring worms working away!!!! Unfortunately there is still couch grass which we have spent the afternoon removing.

Giovanni in Versailles

2010-01-30T20:03:00.000+01:00

Travelling on the suburban train in pale light and feathery snow. Reading! Playing Mozart in the bijoux renovated palace of Versailles. Walking back to the station via the Italian store in the covered market where I buy fresh tortellini and my ration of a half bottle of wine. More 'bouquiner' on the return journey. Consuming above delicacies. Bed. These are good days.

Meanwhile, I cannot recommend highly enough Susan Tomes' book 'Beyond the Notes', the story of 'Domus' and insightful, touching and hilarious musings on the inner workings of a chamber musician's life in and out of a geodesic dome.

Happy Birthday to me from Babu!

2010-01-21T09:33:00.002+01:00

The mice ate the cake. The cat is in the sink. It must be my birthday!

Snow and Sunshine in Provence

2010-01-12T20:04:00.000+01:00

We live in Narnia!

Silence

2010-01-11T20:23:00.000+01:00

First the muffled bustle of the reduced market, then the silence of snow falling from trees, balls of neige and a bump on the head as I walk in the magical Demoselles Coiffées, our back garden, collecting cones for the fire. A typical Monday.

More snow in Provence!

2010-01-10T16:54:00.001+01:00

Spot the man on the two hour bread run à pied....(Julian is not as fat as he looks. He is carrying a stone ground organic loaf up his jumper!)

Snow in Provence!

2010-01-09T11:57:00.000+01:00

Lucky we don't have to go anywhere: get on a train, catch a flight, take the tube, get to school or work. Lucky we are just at home all cosy and white making boooks and paintings.

Felix Wurman. In Memoriam.

2010-01-02T23:07:00.004+01:00

Not many New Years' days come in as smooth as velouté de cardoons and ceps in candlelight with jolly company, and by the light of a full moon with a 1999 Chateauneuf du Pape, and then end in such a shock as an old friend’s sudden (for me at least,
Felix was battling with bladder cancer for over a year) death.

I didn’t have the chance to say hello to Felix, or goodbye. Today, however, I realize how much a man to whom I have not spoken for over twenty years is part of the yarn of me.

Here is one of my strongest memories of Felix Wurman.

I was seventeen. Felix was probably in his early twenties, living in London, sharing a house with another of the brilliant curly-haired cellists of his generation, Richard Lester. He had created Domus, a group that went around Europe performing music on hilltops in a geodesic dome that he built and the group erected at the appointed sites. (‘Suffice it’ says SusanTomes ‘to say that Felix was probably the only person in the world who could have got me to run about in the rain carrying heavy boxes full of aluminium tubes.’)

Anyway the phone rang.
‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ said Felix.
‘Nothing’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Wanna come to Italy?’ (The American pronunciation being the delicious 'Iddully').
Felix and I were both studying cello in Germany at the time. Or perhaps he’d finished. Anyway, there was a course, he said, that I mustn’t miss, with a great cellist. I agreed. I don’t know why. Well, yes I do, because it was Felix, and he was always and absolutely irresistible.
The next day after dusk, Felix and I rolled up with our two cellos and a rucksac or two, in his camper van, on a Tuscan hill. Lots of people were walking around with strange shaped instruments. At that point I knew nothing about original instruments. I had certainly never heard of a theorbo. Or of Anner Bylsma, the great master of baroque cello. I played Hindemith as that is all I had prepared, and looked a fool. A square. Felix played Bach and Boccherini and anything else, launching himself and flowing into the baroque repertoire, and of course life in Iddully (and the wine, espresso and girls that came with it) with a his unique Wurman zest. As always.
Today I am a baroque cellist. I think I flow a little, sometimes, and have a degree of zest. Today, for the very first time, I wonder if Felix was not at the core of a slight gear shift then that, twenty years later, became a life change.

Felix went on to create the Church of Beethoven
in Albequerque. If you live anywhere near, go. If not, create a new one.

Oh Felix, you packed so much into your too short life. I never got to say Bravo. Nor hello. Nor goodbye. But I love you and I promise I will try to honour your memory by trying to live fully, passionately, with risk and heart, humility, humour, love and courage. Let there be churches of Beethoven around the world.

Oh and by the way, I think you would be proud of me. I gave Julian a very fine Rancilio coffee grinder for Christmas. Be peaceful wherever you are, dear friend, and be always surrounded by beautiful music.

Dancing Christmas Cats

2009-12-22T18:45:00.001+01:00

Completion

2009-11-21T19:22:00.003+01:00

There must be something about completion in the stars this month. There was (and will be) the baby. I got my third draft back from the divine V and I think I'm almost there, and then there's this:

Ten minutes ago Julian sold the last of the special Edition de Tête, Postcard from Provence book. We now have the funds to go to press and bring this beautiful thing into being. We have a dummy book on the table which is all silky and gorgeous. Pre-sales will be available here starting next week. Keep your eyes peeled and spread the word! It is going to be gorgeous!

Oh, and it looks like, as Julian does the final tweaks to the plumbing in the guest bathroom this week, we may have the first completely finished (and exquisite) room in the house.

Wedensdays at St Cosme 2

2009-11-10T18:05:00.006+01:00

Lime, vine and cherry leaves have been blown away by the mistral, the first snow is atop the Ventoux and I am remembering a certain wedensday about three weeks ago at St Cosme, when it was still balmy.

I pull up at the gates to the chateau. The radio in the renault will not budge from the incomprehensible (even for a cultured girl who speaks good French) France ****ing Culture. The boot will not close and the car is matted all over with the remains of two dozen car-loads of horse-poo that I have been moving from the equestrian centre to our organic garden and it is sticking to my bare legs. I haven't had any coffee. It is 9.30.

'Ah a Renault mégane estate!' sniffs Louis, appearing at the gate with a look of disgust in which I detect the respect of my new student waning. 'That is not the same thing as the mini convertible!'

I mutter something about Julian having his bobbing-about-in-a-small-swimming-pool-with-the-kiné-and-his-frozen-shoulder session and enter. In front of the chateau stand about thirty workers. Polish, possibly. One of them hands me a glass whose contents I imagine fighting with the muesli and fat free yoghurt I am still trying to digest from breakfast. I decline.

'A coffee perhaps?' I say.

'Come, have a drink with us!' says Louis who, in a few minutes is supposed to be playing me a Bach sarabande and concentrating on his abdominal breathing. 'We are celebrating the end of the Vendange!'.

The mood is indeed festive. There have been slim but very high quality pickings. The workers have performed well. Everyone is drunk. Someone hands me a coffee. I gulp it down and suddenly I find myself opening up my cello case.

'A bit of Bach for the party?' I ask.

I play the shakiest Bach Sarabande under a large plane tree I have ever played, which I hope is because of the coffee rather than the beady eye of my highly accomplished deeply respected wine maker student, but the workers seem to love it. Then I drag Louis away for his lesson.

As always we start with breathing, inviting the excitement of the end of the season, the stress about having to pay forty workers before they make their way back to Eastern Europe, the Important Client who will arrive later that day, not to mention the clarinet, ballet, and piano lessons that need to be driven to to fall away. At the beginning it almost doesn't seem worth it. In fact I think we both think it would be easier just to stay in the stress and excitement. Just for today. Anyway, that is what I am paid to do, so we keep at it. I know he does not have time to practice but this week I can hear a difference in his sound and see that his breath is starting to inform his playing. When we talk, about curved notes, tides, tension and release, I can hear that he loves to delve into the spiritual, philosophical and natural side of music making. When he plays his musicality is raw and tender under the guidance of his grape stained fingernails, and as always I am moved, by him and by the intimacy of our exchange.

When we finish he runs off to pay the workers, but he does not forget to return with my petrol money.

'This is my best wine' he says, presenting me with a bottle of Côte Rôtie. Children are running and playing saxophones everywhere. There are cats and an ill dog, but he stands absolutely still under an unframed painting of Julian's onions and looks me directly in the eye. 'Everything about this wine is exactly the same as the things we have been talking about. You will see.'

And we did see. Julian and I got the good news from Bamako a week later and as we had promised each other, opened one of the best wines of the region. In one sniff I could taste the music.

(These two photographs are of the view from our house in it's last Autumn glory.)

A strange pregnancy

2009-10-25T13:01:00.001+01:00

As the poplars turn golden and and persimmons fall from the trees in Provence, somewhere in Mali a woman is either going to carry, is carrying, or will carry our child. Her pregnancy and birth will most likely be one of sadness, possibly even violence. It may be that a girl walking the streets of Bamako does not yet know that she is to be raped. Meanwhile a thread weaves itself tenderly, delicately across continents, towards a woman whom I will never know but will always love.

A friend sent me this beautiful song by Francis Cabrel. The sixth verse says: 'This little white soul, will be born two times. One between your hips, and the next in our arms.'

Mademoiselle l'Aventure

Mademoiselle l'aventure
Vous avez posé sans bruit
Roulé dans sa couverture
Un petit ange endormi

On arrivait de nulle part
On l'a serré contre nous
Ce qui ressemble au hasard
Souvent est un rendez-vous

Mademoiselle le mystère
Evanouie pour toujours
Vous serez toujours la mère
Nous serons toujours l'amour

C'est le livre qu'on partage
Et nous voilà réunis
Au matin de chaque page
On vous remercie

Vous avez l'âge où on s'amuse de tout de rien de son corps
Pas de témoin je présume juste la lune et encore
Et ce trésor cette colombe qui vous avait ralentie
Vous l'avez posée dans l'ombre et l'ombre vous a reprise

Cette petite âme blanche
Elle sera née deux fois
La première entre vos hanches
La seconde entre nos bras

La force que ça lui donne
C'est de l'éclat de diamant
On veut le dire à personne
A vous seulement

Vous qui avez l'âge où on s'amuse de tout de rien de son corps
Pas de témoin je présume juste la lune et encore
Et ce trésor cette colombe qui vous avait ralentie
Vous l'avez posée dans l'ombre et l'ombre vous a reprise

Vous êtes sûrement très belle
Comme ce petit miroir de vous
Qui s'endort contre mon aile
C'est tout ce que je sais de vous
Mademoiselle. ..

Francis Cabrel

Fresh off the press.

2009-10-18T09:36:00.000+02:00

Fresh of the 'espace personnelle' of the French Adoption Agency:

We are now officially in the third trimester of our eternal pregnancy! It turns out after all that we HAVE been selected from over a thousand waiting dossiers
in the 2009 commission in Mali!

We are now on a list of 125 future parents who will receive the next
125 abandoned babies that are brought by the extraordinary people who work there to one of the two orphanages in Bamako. One day in the next 3-18 months we will get a call that says our infant is waiting to be picked up and we will get on the next flight to Bamako. We will hold our child in our arms for the first time, and finally we will bring him, or her, home.

It has been a long wait. It may be a long wait still, but at least we
know now we will have our family, and meanwhile there are many silent
creative days to appreciate and projects to fulfill before our lives
change for ever!

Tonight, meanwhile, we will crack open the champagne at last! Or should it be the
Côte Rotie???? hmmm....

Contiuning saga

2009-10-16T15:50:00.000+02:00

And suddenly it is winter and they are cutting the vines before they even have a chance to blush with our good news...If indeed there is ever any.

.....So next, I phone Agence Française de l'Adoption and they say 'No you are NOT on the list. Not under Phillips, Poskie, Merrow-Manon. Not no nothing no-name nobody.

So then I phone the lawyer in Mali again and he says. No you ARE on the list. Just wait. The AFA will contact you in a few days. This turns, at the end of a few days, into 'next week'.....

Haven't I had these phonecalls before?

Well, apparently what was 'next week' has now come and gone, it being Friday as far as I can see. Without word. So I call our lawyer in Mali and demand that he explain exactly what is going on. This is what he says.

Our lawyer gave the Direction des Enfants et de la Famille a list with the name Ruth Phillips on it. The Direction couldn't find a Ruth Phillips (of course, because our dossier is under Merrow-Smith) so the Direction ignored that poor crazy woman on the other side of the world waiting for her little Malian poppet, and sent the list off to Paris without her. And of course her dear patient philosophical husband. When our lawyer got my email asking what had happened and why we weren't we on the list, he went to the Direction and sorted out the mistake. They said that's all well and dandy because several people who were selected have refused their place (found a kid somewhere else, died, agreement no longer valid, decided they couldn't be bothered, whatever) and we are now sending out a second list (the B list we all dread being on) to which we will add your client. So I (and of course dear patient philosophical Julian) should have been on the A list but this is my life and I always somehow end up being on the B list, don't I? Even when I'm on the bloody A list.

That B list left Bamako yesterday. It has to go to the consulate first in Paris and then to the AFA. Then apparently, some time next week? the AFA will contact us.

So as Julian says, a painting is not sold till the money is in the bank, and we are not on that list till we are holding the official letter from the AFA in our hands.

So I'm afraid we have to stay zen and you have to keep everything crossed still. Sorry about the cramps, but you should try adopting a child!

Meanwhile, because I do not stay in depression long, I finished the third draft of my book, and my Indesign course and we have started designing Julian's book in his new skylit office, and here's another big question: What painting do YOU want to see on the cover?

Commission in Mali 2009

2009-10-07T11:31:00.005+02:00

Having realized the possibilities of her adopting a child in Nepal were slim, M put a dossier in Mali straight away. It had been there only a month but she was off to Bamako to give a helping hand in the orphanage in the hope that it would advance her case. She was not expecting to be selected in the next commission, she said as we sat in the Grand Café discussing our chances, although miracles could happen..... Meanwhile I was fairly confident. Our Malian lawyer had, in January, given me reason to be. ‘You were this close in the last commission’ he said, joining his his elegant index finger with his thumb over his breakfast in Terminus Nord. ‘You will Certainly be selected in the next.’ I had abandoned the dossier in Haiti and decided to wait. Now, sitting in the ancient stone vaults of the restaurant in the Papal city, Marie and I raised our glasses in the hope we would both get through this hurdle, and that we would be Mums together.

I handed M two letters to take to Bamako, one for the head of the orphanage and one for the head of the adoption committee. In these letters I told our news and wrote about what a wonderful person my M was. I hugged my new friend and wished her a Bon Voyage.

Insha'Allah, we agreed.

Twice a day I receive and delete emails from the various adoptanafricanchild forums. Last Thursday, for some reason, I opened up the email and there, under new messages, I found dozens of blissed out cries. ‘Its my turn at last!’ ‘The Malian angel has descended upon us!’ ‘Martin will have his little sister at last!’. The yearly commission in Mali had taken place. Wow. In it, the next 125 (out of over a thousand waiting) couples, singles and families had been selected and in the months that followed they would be attributed their baby. On my mobile phone a text message flashed up from Marie. ‘Go to the French Adoption Agency site.’ I quivered as I tapped in my password to access my éspace personelle. It had been two years since our dossier had been in Mali, but three and a half since we had decided to adopt, and eight since we had been trying to have the family we so longed for. Those eight years had been filled with some sadness, of course, but also with wonder. The move to France, the launch of Shifting Light, delicious operas, three cats, the acquisition and slow but sure bio-dynamic renovation of our beautiful house in the vines…I looked at the dates and the information. There was no date after February 2008 when our dossier arrived in Bamako. Was there a mistake, I wondered? I phoned the French Adoption Agency. No, they said, the website was up to date, and if the September date had not appeared on our éspace personelle, we had not been selected.

I checked my email to see if our lawyer had been in touch. In my box there was nothing from him. Instead there was an email from M. In her happiest hour, having been chosen. She was thinking of us, she said, and carrying us in her heart.

For the next two days I became one of those clicking- over- and- over- and- over- check- the- post- perhaps- there -has been- a- mix- up- kind –of- crazy- women. Where was OUR big white envelope? Where was OUR baby? I wailed. I seethed inside. The rejection, for that is what it felt like, was so unjust. Of course it bought up old grief and new despair. I was jealous of M. I was furious with our lawyer. Julian arranged emergency lap visits from our cat Poskie, brought me glasses of rosé and ran me a bath. He cajoled me into a fancy condolence lunch in Avignon. Afterwards I cried some more. And then I did what they did in the song. I picked myself up, brushed myself off, and started all over again. This time in the Côte d’Ivoire.

I found a wonderful lawyer who said our dossier was strong, and moving, and that we would almost certainly pass fairly swiftly through one of the next commissions that were held every three months. She was coming to France and we would meet. I looked up Ivory Coast in my Lonely Planet guide. I learned about the history and the tribes and slowly I began to get excited again.

And then the telephone rang. It was our lawyer in Mali. ‘But you ARE on the list’ he said. 'There has been a mix up with your maiden and your married names. You will hear from the adoption agency. Just wait.’

So that is what we are doing. We cannot celebrate. Nor can we move on with the Côte d’Ivoire dossier or indeed the Côte Rôtie. All we can do is sit in the sickly sweet fermenting air of the end of the grape harvest. And wait.

Insha'Allah.

Wedensdays at St Cosme

2009-09-27T10:33:00.009+02:00

Driving towards Gigondas at midday on a Wedensday in September, the reek of grape juice is overpowering. A black line runs down the middle of the road like a secret way marking. Tinny trucks crouch like toys in the vineyards, their trailers bulging with the deep purple cargo. Heads bob up and down between the rows as the last of the pickers deliver their fruit. Some of the workers are already lying on the roadside, hats tipped over brows, baguettes torn open at their sides, exhausted. At the Co-op, the trucks form patient queues waiting to disgorge their morning load, whilst on the other side of the building pipes are filling customers’ vats and bidons with wine. What goes in must come out. And all of this bathed in autumnal light.

I am on my way to Chateau St Cosme where I am teaching cello to both father and daughter. When I arrive, I ask Louis how his crop survived the recent downpours. He says that the grapes were too hard with the drought and that the rain has softened them perfectly.

He sits down with his cello and lays his hands on the ribs of the instrument. He plays me some Bach. Deeply felt and full of fantasy. We start with some breathing exercises and I see the toil start to leave his body and gradually his sound begins to open up a little. Grapes seem to be embedded in his very skin and lodged under his nails.

Louis' daughter is five. When it comes to her lesson, we find phrases and tap their rhythms out with the bow. We explore fairy harmonics as we draw our fingers up and down the string. We try to find elephants and mice in the sounds we make. We giggle. When I am given a tour of the cellars, however, Alix becomes serious and professional about being papa's assistant. She clearly knows her stuff and may well be the one on whom the wine making mantel falls.

It is awe inspiring, and touching, to be with a man and his daughter whose family has been making wine since 1570, a century before Bach was born, and to whom, for some reason, the cello means so much.

I am paid, and compensated heavily for my ‘kilometrage’ with too many bottles of Côtes du Rhone.

‘I like to do things properly’ says Louis. ‘You have travelled so many kilometres and that equals a certain sum of money. Some weeks you may have four bottles of Little James, others you may have one bottle of Côte Rotie, but do not worry, it will equal the correct sum.’

We part and agree to meet at the same time next week. I drive the exquisite drive back through the vineyards of Gigondas, deliriously happy with my new Wedensday gig. Later, sipping the wine I have been gifted, I pray that I may bring something equal to the pleasure of this taste into their lives through our musical explorations.

Fabada

2009-09-14T16:13:00.003+02:00

It was our final day in Asturias. The sun was shining. the cow bells were ringing and we were excited about LUNCH!

On our arrival at Casa Marcial, we were encouraged to have the traditional menu. I wasn’t sure how much better fabada or rice pudding could come than those dishes we had eaten in the simple places along the way, and I noticed there was neither fish or a single vegetable on the menu, but I always follow other people's advice. To a fault.

That night Julian was sick as a dog and the twelve hour drive home the next day was punctuated with far too many motorway stops. We had been poisoned by the michelin starred restaurant! Then, to boot, we arrived home to find that the pump in our own waste water purification system had ceased to function.

‘Histoire de merde’, said Julian, having spent a third morning mopping and scooping the poop and rushing once more for the small room.

We are better now, and beginning not only to love the memory of the bean stew from Asturias but to want to recreate it as we contemplete the winter nights that will soon draw in. Meanwhile, the tourists have left Provence and the ceps have arrived along with the breeze, and a precious season of glowing is upon us.

Picu Uriellu

2009-09-10T21:11:00.005+02:00

Our budget lunch at Casa Moran in Benia finally happened on the next, a very tired and rainy day. After a refreshing stroll along the river at La Molina we enjoyed another fabada, served with almost spooky intention by a Spanish version of Mrs Danvers. I was learning to leave the chips that came with everything. Julian, meanwhile, was learning to finish them for me.

Having rested and lunched, and planning a final day of more of the same (this time on the beach and at Casa Marcial) before we left on Monday, we were up early for our final big walk on Saturday. By that time we had sussed that you could get great coffee at eight, and the best breakfast in the world of a ham tortilla bocadillo for the price of a pee in Euston station in the walkers Café Cares in Arenas. There you could also whet your appetite by admiring the impressive array of photographs from climbers of the Picos de Europa that hung on the walls and were dedicated to the owner who had clearly provided them with much of their fuel. Julian’s bocadillo filled smile that morning was, I think, his biggest yet!

We started off, well supplied, at Canares, after a steep and stunning ascent in the car past Tielve. Red roofs and green pastures were caught in the morning rays and cheesemakers went about their early cheesemaking tasks. We parked and tried to decide between raingear and fleece, long and short trousers as the cloudless sky mocked our wavering.

The walk to the refuge at Picu Uriellu was on a good path over grassy slopes, through heather, past cows and goats and horses and remote farm buildings. We didn't talk much except for a few tips from the mountaineering maestro to his mistress. 'Straighten your knees. Try taking bigger steps.' I took Julian's advice, adding the advice I give to my cello students (and indeed myself). 'As soon as you arrive on a finger you are leaving it. Use every joint as a spring board. The impulse comes from your middle. It's all about throwing yourself off balance and the limb swinging effortlessly forward to try and recreate the balance.....' As the path became steeper, snake like and on scree, I found I was less puffed out. The square peak loomed tall and silver in the distance. Meanwhile I couldn't help being just a litle pissed off that Julian could walk up a mountain having not moved for two years (since our holiday in Skye I believe) whilst I, having jogged all year round and swam an hour a day all summer, still lagged behind.

By the time we got to the refuge and dug into our country bread and the blue cheese from the valley we had just left, we were both feeling strong, joyous, slim and fit!

That evening we joined the weekend throngs in Llanes for grilled squid and baby eels sizzling with hot peppers. We had a velvety Rioja. We saw a wedding and heard bagpipes and retired to the sound of waves and the cowbells, the sound that was beginning to feel like home.

The Cares Gorge

2009-09-09T17:30:00.008+02:00

Coffee in Asturias was becoming a problem. We had forgotten our espresso maker and besides the coffee in Spain was good, right? Trouble was we couldn't seem to get any before ten. Thus we were making later starts than intended. And then there was the temptation of that swim first thing, and those wave-induced smiles of Julian's as he bobbed and ducked...

Anyway, for our second attempt at a Short Walk Before Lunch (we had our eye on the place mentioned in the Guardian as serving highly calorific simple fare) we were on the mountain road by eleven. We chose not to have our coffee in either of the places called Poo (little did we know how symbolic these places would become)but instead in a small market town. In Arenas de Cabrales we replenished our walking sock supply in a shop that sold everything that you could possibly want and in which there there was not a single bar code. (Gold medallion souvenir blue cheese? Sure. Skip in back to brown box. Waterproof trousers? Sure. Skip in back to another brown box etc) Then, at my insistence, we bought a litre of water, a hunk of bread and a block of the cheese for which the region was famous. We were ready for our morning walk. In fact we were ready for anything. Almost. 'Just a quick visit to the tourist office' I said.

Julian hates tourist offices. He is the kind of guy that, rather than go to the information centre right in front of him to find out where the map shop is, he will walk round the entire town trying to find it. He is not a tourist office kind of guy. He is the kind of guy who eats the picnic while his wife is in the tourist office.

'The Cares gorge from Poncebos to Cain is only three hours each way' I said, emerging to find teeth marks in the cheese. 'Surely we can do it?'

Needless to say, our budget fabada (the highly calorific simple Asturian bean stew with chorizo and black pudding) at Casa Moran in Benia did not happen that day either. However, we did have a very tasty Magnum (a highly calorific simple chocolate covered ice cream popsicle thing) in Cain with our feet plunged in icy river water and the sun beating on our shoulders.

Asturias

2009-09-08T17:09:00.005+02:00

It all started one sweaty afternoon in June. We were facing the increasing heat and crowds of a Provençal canicule and the relentless production of postcard sized paintings. Julian had a frozen shoulder and his face was already engraved with exhaustion lines. It was time to plan a cool escape. As always Monsieur wanted mountains and I wanted sea. We both wanted folk music and good peasant food, fish, and a Michelin starred restaurant. Skye, we agreed with misty eyes, had been perfect. We were looking in to Ireland when up on the Guardian popped this article . It was settled. Asturias it would be, and the holiday would peak (I suspected secretly as I researched and Julian rushed to the finishing line) at Casa Marcial. At the end of August we would pack walking boots, our cute blue tent and the red bible, we would drive nine hours and we would be there. On holiday at last.

Two months later, we crossed the border in to Spain. We pitched our tent above the sea, walked the rugged walk into the scrappy port and found the perfect tapas, sweet salt cod on roasted green peppers, and a tumbler of rioja. We breathed deeply. We were in for a treat.

Once in Asturias, after a cider in Llanes' Bar Colon, and a hearty lunch of fabada and other traditional fare, we found a home for our tent looking over the Playa de Troenzo. The sound of cowbells mingled with the crash of the waves and the wake up smell of eucalyptus as we explored the nearby coves and beaches of Borizo and Torimbia. We ventured in to the cool water. The dark creases under Julian’s eyes began to melt into the spume. I hadn’t seen my love smile that child-like smile in months.

The next day we planned a short walk around the mountain lakes. We were both tired from the journey and since the Spanish don’t start eating till two or three we had time to take it easy and still be down in time for lunch. However the Sunday bussing service to Lake Enol put in place to cope with the weight of tourists seemed suddenly daunting, especially for a hermit just emerging from his cave, so we turned back. Instead we headed towards a remote place called Gamoneu.

Within the hour, true to form, Julian had us off the trail, onto a cow trail, then an ant trail and then, as far as I could see, a no ****ing trail at all. We had eaten a croissant and in our bag we had 25cl of water. Up up up we clambered. I was almost in tears. Up more hundreds of feet. We really didn’t have enough supplies. I insisted. Through mud and over scree, through bracken and gorse, our calves and arms were being scratched and our feet pummelled. Only another six hours, he said.....This was not what I came prepared for I whined inwardly. Just around this col and we're on the pass, he said. Then it's all downhill on a good path. The good path had been ravaged by cows and no longer existed. We stumbled and fell. Ouch. This was not within the goalposts we had set out at the start, I thought. But this was, I realised gradually as I began to win the struggle with myself, GLORIOUS! Wild, lonesome, rugged and above all lush. We found more water from a spring and at the end there were blackberries, and there again was that smile which was the best landscape of all. After seven and a half hours we made the last ascent. Something blue glimmered in the hamlet where we had parked the car. We watched it come closer. Was it a bar? Yes!!!! That evening we sat huddled in our fleeces and released from our boots on the bar’s terrace, looking at the full moon rise over the mountain we had just climbed, eating anything and everything that came to us – chorizo in cider, creamy blue cheese, some filet of something with chips, and lots of beer. It was one of the best meals we have ever had! All for the price of two coffees in Paris.

More to come!

Le Tour de France est parti

2009-07-27T14:17:00.005+02:00

Our friends actually made it through the road blocks to our Le Tour Barbie Day. After some bubbly we made our way through the Demoiselles Coiffées to our spot on the Route du Mont Ventoux.

We stood and drank Crémant and ate brie and chili jam sarnies for an hour...

The Caravan passed by...

Threw lots of very useful things at us such as non biodegradable washing up liquid, nylon T-shirts and Etap hotel night caps....

Julian stayed home looking after the barbecue and watching the action on the telly and, when the cyclists got half way between Mormoiron and Bedoin, he ran.

The helicopter buzzed over our heads to let us know the posse were on their way. And then, in less than a minute they were gone.

I only got a Caisse d'Epargne cycle clip which I am pretending is a Livestrong bracelet. We didn't see Lance or Bradley, though I cried for them, but we had a blast. Then we walked home and had a feast.

Now the house is calm. The guests have gone and, more importantly, so has the eternal racket of the Tour on telly. Now, coming from Julian's studio, there are the low tones once again of books on tape. People called Julius and Lydia have replaced Lance and Brad. Love has replaced competition. A beach in Norfolk has replaced a mountain in Provence.

The mountain, like me, is breathing a big sigh. Even Julian seems relieved!

Le Tour de France arrive

2009-07-24T19:32:00.018+02:00

I awoke early. As I watered the lavender, I felt a warmth on my back and the flower bed was suddenly illuminated. I turned, and saw the sun rise above the shoulder of the Mont Ventoux.

I am not a competitive sports kind of person. I like walking, swimming, jogging. Solitary stuff. A deux at most. I am wondering what it is that excites me about the Tour de France passing by us. Julian is riveted and has managed, for the past three weeks, to paint whilst having it on the screen to the side of his easel. All I know is that I love Lance and want one of those wrist bands, and that if I look closely, he will be the one en danseuse with black socks. And that there is a British guy. Not enough, surely, to fire me up?

Last night I came back from town at eight. It was still thirty degrees and Madame Ventoux was all pink and had a cloud would round her like a feather boa. Meanwhile, camper vans and tents were beginning to line the route the cyclists will take tomorrow.

This morning Julian and I took a trip to Sault. As we drove around the flanks of the mountain we could see a glinting ring of what looked like diamonds circling its neck. Camper vans never looked so pretty.

The Lavender capital was getting ready. The Tour de France van was putting up its arrows and Sault had its lavender and wheat prayer flags flying, but apart from that business was as usual and the harvest continued.

Meanwhile, in our fridge, we had a dodgy map of road closures, a leg of lamb, lots of cute aubergines and three kilos of the last cherries for our Tour Barbecue. And nine anticipated guests. If they could get through the road closures.

We drove home. We drove up and down the mountain, up out of the valley of lavender, into the pine forest and down into the vineyards and cherry trees.

I realized that what I am moved by is the waiting mountain. By noon tomorrow 700,000 people will be paying homage to 156 cyclists paying homage to her. She is so majestic in her waiting, in her receiving the puffed out sports people, puffed up locals, and tourists. Though we see her every day, she is, as ever, so very beautiful.

Tour de France preparations

2009-07-21T08:47:00.003+02:00

Julian, as always, makes a perfect map for friends coming for the big day, avoiding the caravan.

L'Etape de Tour

2009-07-20T20:09:00.006+02:00

Today nine and a half thousand people passed through our village on the Etape de Tour, an everyman (and his bike)'s rehearsal for the real Tour de France which will pass by on Saturday.

I was on my way back from the pool, on my bike because our roads were all closed. The market had been shunted up to the route de Flassan and everything was deliciously clear.

I was in an expanded stretched-out breathed-into post Monday morning swim world when I noticed that everyone was cheering me. It was then that I heard the plastic bottles under tyre, saw the banana skins and realized they thought I had come all the way from Montelimar and was on my sprightly way up to the summit of the Mont Ventoux. The bike bullets whizzed past, many on mobile phones (Mom I made it as far as Bedoin! Is the beer cooling in Malaucène?). There was music. I bought salad from the veg gal with neither of our pairs of eyes leaving the route. Met a friend buying peaches who had dropped her party off at 5.30 that morning in Montelimar and was shopping for the party. I called Julian and we sat on a wall and drank a 'demi' in the shade of a plane tree. It was lively, convivial (note the 'Menu Vélo' for eight euros at Pizza Phil), loud in the soft kind of way it can be when there is no traffic.

Then we went home to a chicken salad on the terrace of our quiet pile of stones called home and the bullets cycled up the mountain.

Lavender Harvest

2009-07-18T18:28:00.002+02:00

They are just beginning the lavender harvest on the other side of the Mont Ventoux, at Sault. The route was crawling with cyclists doing the mountain in advance of their cher Lance, so it took a while to reach the summit before dropping down in to the purple sea. Luckily we forgot to bring any money with us so we were not seduced by the heady scent in to losing the day to a boozy lunch as we have been in the past.

The Painter's Garden 2

2009-07-16T08:57:00.004+02:00

I continue to shovel car-loads of manure from the nice equestrian folk across the orchard, and pile it on to the Painter's plot. It's steamy work for thirty seven degrees, but the Painter assures me it is worthwhile. Meanwhile, this is our prize plant on the terrace this year: A Sicilian courgette - Zuccha Lunghissima di Sicilia - which seeds we bought in Puglia whilst visiting my Mum last year. It produces moon coloured flowers that shimmer in the night, and has curled its way round every available bean stem with pale green tentacles, and a long and slightly furry sausage of courgettishness which is delicious lightly steamed in salads or stir-fries. Other folk that are doing well from seed, also of Italian origin, are Cima di Rape and Purple Sprouting Broccoli.

aubergines

2009-07-14T17:30:00.004+02:00

Tha aubergine seller in the little farmer's market at the foot of the Mont Ventoux thinks that markets here are 'condamnés'; that a new generation are growing up wanting everything now baby now from supermarkets and that the humble cheese seller is finished. When I was in the idyllic English village of Garsington, I was told that the only place to shop (for rocket grown in Portugal it turned out) was an immense Tesco in a concrete nightmare of an industrial 'park' to which I had to drive. I googled and googled and, in the last of my seven weeks (too late for all the exquisite picnics I had to make for the extended opera intervals) found two fantastic farm shops.

Meanwhile, my friends' kids seem to care deeply about organic, local and slow food....

Sometimes I feel confused. Mostly I feel hopeful, but perhaps that's because I am living in a bubble of little farmers markets selling cute aubergines and white truffles.

A Painter's Garden

2009-07-09T18:37:00.004+02:00

We have been offered a little bit of land to use by Monsieur Chauvet Junior. They are his peaches, apricots and cherries that appear so often on Julian's
paintings and, low and behold, he turns out to be an amateur painter who has promptly 'fallen in admiration' with Julian's work. It only seems fitting, then, that we should plant a Potager du Peintre, growing things that will find their way onto little Provençal postcards and remind Monsieur (while he is busy packing spices in bottles for Ducros) of the lovely terrain where he hopes to retire. Then of course the vegetables will make their way to our soups and salads.

The first step today was to try and develop some good soil. Here is our somewhat improvised recipe:

1. Round up the oak chippings from the builder, the cut grass from next door, horse manure from the neighbours and our own rotting peelings.
2. Plonk them on the land.
3. Attempt to cover during a fierce mistral wind.
4. Let them simmer under the lid for a Provençal summer.
5. Turn on some loud music and invite the worms to party.

As you can see I have only managed one row and I have a very burnt nose.

two finales

2009-07-06T20:47:00.003+02:00

His feet hardly touch the ground. He floats above the court. Almost never lands. Certainly never falls. His footwork is as good and as graceful as that of Fred Astaire. His is never off balance. He is in the zone. He is zen. He is always in motion. His preparation and follow-through are exactly proportional to his stroke. (Unless, of course, he is tricking you, which is the only difference between Roger Federer and a great chamber musician.) Certainly (along with Stevie Wonder, of course) he is a God of bass line playing.

It was the end of Wimbledon, and the end of Garsington Opera. In fact, the opening chord of our last performance broke at almost exactly the moment that Federer broke Roddick’s serve for the first time and polished off the tournament. (At thirteen-all I had decided that my hour long warm up had already been shortened by fifty five too many minutes so I forced myself to leave three minutes before the end.) Apparently there were tears on centre court. And in the players’ box. There were certainly tears in the pit. Tears for what we had built and weathered and shared. For the poppies and the picnics. For the phrases we had sent out, along with the cock’s crow, in to the Oxfordshire air night after night. For stage style fancy dress on the last night. For the compassion we felt and received when finger-work was off, or we fell, or our gesture was not proportional to the note we were about to play and we put our desk partner off balance. For being human.

And meanwhile, in amongst all that humanity, it was good to know that there IS a God out there called Roger.

And it's good to be home at the foot of the Mont Ventoux and to know that another God, Lance Armstrong, will be passing by the bottom of the road to inspire us soon on the Tour de France.

We're heating up the barbecue.....

Rain Stops Play

2009-06-29T21:17:00.005+02:00

It was another steamy day in Garsington. I was looking after our conductor’s children for the afternoon and, along with the rest of the nation, we were waiting for the third game on Wimbledon’s centre court. Would we get to see the dour Scotsman under the new roof? we wondered as we watered the wilting flowerbeds of my B and B. I thought, with some sadness, that these two kids would never get to see Cliff Richard spontaneously entertaining the crowd, or hours of BBC footage of improvised head-gear when rain stopped play. It would be typical, just typical, wouldn’t it, we agreed, if he walked on court just as we had to walk in to the opera pit.

Murray, of course, walked on to a tennis court in South London at six; at exactly the moment I, in Oxfordshire, wove through the men’s chorus warming up (with the conductor's son) with a ball game and picnicking penguins squatting on blankets, and hauled my cello under the folded tarpaulin to add the squawk of my to the popping of champagne corks and the song of the blackbird in the gardens in preparation for Maestro Beethoven.

Our sixth performance was going well and I managed to forget my frustration at not seeing the match as we held the sublime sub-dominant chord for Leonora (the girl dressed as a boy employed as the prison turnkey in the hope of releasing her beloved Florestan) who sang like an angel about a rainbow.

In the break we rushed to the green room to see the score and witnessed Murray serving out the match. We shared leftover salads from tupperware containers, chatted for a bit about holidays, roses, children, motorways, and made coffee. And it was then that the rain came in fast moving sheets. Picnics were scooped up leaving flaked salmon and glasses littering the lawn, and out came the infamous English improvised headgear as we all rushed to the relative shelter of the opera tent. Florestan lay curled in his cell. We played our first pianissimo chord forte and the second fortissimo chord fortississimo to try and combat the sound of the rain. Fingers were damp, horsehair was limp, feet wet and bottoms cold. Peter Wedd belted his song noiselessly out into the sodden void: ‘Oh Gott…..’. Someone leaned over in to the pit and shouted. ‘You might as well stop playing we can’t hear a bloody thing.’ We continued, unwilling to cut the thread of this masterpiece and lost in our own submarine world of unheard mega decibels, until raindrops started plopping on seventeenth century varnish and putting our instruments at risk. There were hoots and cries from the punters above. There were gasps from the children. A clap of thunder sent a violinists’s son rushing for the safety of her knee and we had to stop. Then, just as we had fled to the only dry spot in the pit, the tarpaulin collapsed under the weight of the rain and a waterfall descended on the electrics at exactly the point where my colleagues and I had been sitting only moments before.

We waited. The audience waited. I think there may have been more improvised headgear and there were certainly some entertainers in the crowd. Eventually the cut-throat signal came from the manager. It was too dangerous to continue, he shouted above the sound of the pelting. We packed up and made our way to the Mole for an early pint leaving the debris of a half finished opera in the pit and an audience who had never even heard the hero sing.

Rain may no longer stop play at Wimbledon, but it can, and it did, stop play at Garsington, and that night two children were there to witness the thrill and the poetry of it.

Ah, England...

2009-06-21T16:39:00.002+02:00

Garsington days are spent walking through fields barley

Lying in fields, looking at the clouds

Chatting with and then eating Gloucester Old Spot pigs, and drowning the frustrations of Mr Martinu with a pint of 'hookie' in the best English pub I have found....

And yesterday a perfect dessert from a perfect English garden: Gooseberry and elderflower jelly with wild strawberries.

Smelling the Roses at Garsington

2009-06-17T12:06:00.003+02:00

From the first note of the first rehearsal of Martinu's Mirandolina I knew this was a work in which there would be no time to stop and smell the roses that cascade over the Jacobean walls and around the lighting rigs at Garsington. It consists, for us in the pit at least, of zillions of breathless fragments strung together like a busy necklace. There are no arias, very few places of rest, and there is perhaps only half a tune. Which comes once. In every bar there is the chance to play a forte note in a piannissimo rest, misread a clef or an accidental, misinterpret a dot or a slur....Not one to be played with a hangover, D and I agreed, or without a nap and a warm up. This was one to be played in the zone.

The zone for me is a place where I am totally present in the current bar yet always reading at least six bars ahead; I am comfortably in the phrase we are playing and yet on my way to the next; I am without anxiety yet with an edge of anticipation, I have an empty mind, I can feel each whole gesture in my body before I make it, and I am counting each quaver whilst being calmly guided by the changing pulse. And, as if that is not enough: As number two cello I must be decisive and confident without in any way undermining or preempting my number one.

Aaaah....I wish. Last night's dress rehearsal, despite an early and relatively (one pint of hookie) sober night, a nap and an hour of sixths and thirds and slow practice, was the opposite. A mini nightmare of notes having run away from me before I could get a finger on them, eyes skimming the bar before rather than the ones ahead (was that a sharp or a natural?), escalating questions and judgements (damd this feeble light on the yellowing pages - am I going blind? can't count, can't shift, can't concentrate, letting C down every step of the way), still being in waltz mode when we are already in saltorello, missing entries and thus giving my leader absolutely zero confidence in me which doubles the pressure on her, putting zingy pizzicati where there should be silence.....aaaargh.

That's what dress rehearsals are for, right?

And then it's over. We exit into the fragrant dusk of poppy lights and illuminated alium heads and people champagned and picnicked and entertained who didn't notice a thing, who loved it....

...And it is then that I stop and smell a rose.

Four cherries in Garsington

2009-06-14T11:04:00.004+02:00

Our Garsington cello section has, from the first day of rehearsal, been described as an orchestral version of Sex in the City – albeit a middle-aged one. We four women have played together for many years and share an enjoyment and appreciation not only of our similarities but also our differences. I love these girls. In fact I cherish them so much that Julian and I spent my two days at home picking cherries in an abandoned orchard and making cherry jam so I could show my appreciation on my return.

Oxford, June 2009.

A singer maps out the trajectory of a difficult scene on stage, operatic flourishes ride on the breeze from the Jacobean manor house, over the gardens and in under the flap of the tarpaulin that protects this opera house from the English June, and a blackbird practices for his imminent solo. It is an hour before the performance is due to start and Samantha is the only musician seated in the pit. Her antique watch is laid perilously at the back of her chair, a screen is in place to protect her ears from the screaming piccolo, and her iphone, switched to vibrate, touches her left buttock. She goes through the score slowly, breaking phrases down into exercises, playing with different finger groupings on the bow to retrain her lazy digits, trying to figure out why she is shortening and pulling up in her right hip, feeling her big toe alive in her right shoe, making her knuckles as supple as possible. She has failed (or has she refused?) to pack thermal underwear. She has no stockings and is décolletée. She is never going to get warm. And she is never going to learn. Charlotte arrives at the half hour call, wearing silk undergarments and black boots. She wraps a cashmere blanket around her waist, shares a thermos of tea with her lover in the violin section and warms her hands on the pink hot water bottle in her lap before commencing her elegant scales. At the quarter hour Miranda makes her way almost imperceptibly in to the pit, dodging tubas, cables and bows with her slim frame. She places a handkerchief sized bag under the chair, smoothes back her hair, plants her feet in their flat shoes firmly on the floor and starts to play very slowly on the C string. Her sound is rich and deep, full of tannin. All is calm. The orchestra pit fills up. The conductor arrives and tells us a cute story about his six year old son’s reaction to the dress rehearsal (‘Daddy does that mean Fidelio is gay? Daddy can I be gay? Daddy I want to be gay because when I grow up I want to marry a footballer’). We are about to tune. The red light is on. The conductor touches his baton. There is a rustle and a flurry and Carrie arrives. She is wearing a selection of furry items of clothing over her thermals and her insulated sports slacks, has a cello in a soft case flung over one arm and is carrying a pair of satin winkle picker shoes with diamantes across them. She sits down, kicks off her platformed sandals, shoves the dainty shoes on to her feet, hauls the cello out of its case, drops the case on to the floor, gives the instrument a quick tune, checks her blackberry for any mails that may have come in whilst she was crossing the formal gardens, turns it on to silent, and we are off. And we are one.

The cherry jam never made it past the Ryanair check in but when we get to the cello solo in the quartet our colours blend, our gestures are stilled into a single gesture and the vibrations we create rise up from the pit and make many weep. The sound is as sweet and plump and tasty as any confiture.

Meanwhile, in France, Julian has been practicing his clafoutis recipe. Here is is:

JULIAN'S CLAFOUTIS with Chauvet's Cherries.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Take a pound of un-stoned ripe black cherries (preferably straight from the tree:-)) and fill the base of a 12 inch non-stick flan tin in one layer . Whisk together (or put in a food processor) three eggs and three tablespoons of castor sugar (2oz) until smooth. Add a pinch of a salt and a drop of vanilla extract and a half pint of milk. Optionally a dob (tablespoon) of cream (creme fraiche) can be added at this point if you feel you need the calories. Whisk again and then incorporate 2oz/three tbs of flour and half tsp of baking powder. Whisk for 30 seconds. Pour enough batter into the flan tin so the cherries are still on the bottom and the tops are visible. Place in oven for 45 minutes. When colored and slightly risen, remove and dust with icing sugar. Ideally serve warm and it will keep for a day (not in our house).

I will miss...

2009-05-16T08:27:00.004+02:00

I will miss our home grown veg and marvellous wine at an affordable price....

But I am looking forward to Beethoven, cheddar and a good pint of beer!

I am off to England play in Garsington Opera. I will be sitting with one of my closest friends, in whose section I played for twelve years at Glyndebourne and who is just about to adopt as a single Mum. How glad we are that we may finally become mothers together! Perhaps a bit of a last fling for both of us?

Meanwhile, in the move, Julian has fallen twice down the crumbly unattached bricks and amputated ladder that have served as a staircase (and barrier) to his hemp mezzanine for the last few years, and we have broken some fine pottery (but luckily not the finest), but right now he seems content, inspecting his artichokes, dreaming of an insulated, well lit space, and singing 'Oh what a beautiful morning; Someone is coming my way...'

Perhaps he was right about Cuckoo Hamlet?

leaving

2009-05-15T20:57:00.005+02:00

It's hard to leave at this time of year. We have pulled our first carrots, made the most sublime pasta dish with our own artichokes and parsley. Our first ever roses are about to bloom and Oscar is sitting proudly on the roof of the car admiring a rainbow.

Three years ago, Julian moved his printer and office into 'my' room in order to 'do the work' on the studio himself.

'It'll only be a month' he said. Humph.
Knowing it would be at least a year I said 'Perhaps you should put your office in the spare room?'
'You don't understand. I can't move the printer into the spare room; there are wires, plugs, phone points to consider.....'

('He's never gonna leave her'...When Harry Met Sally).

Today, three years (yes, years) later, Olivier started that very same work that Julian never began on Julian's studio. It has taken this long for Julian to realize that he will never be a painter and a builder (and open a restaurant and internet cafe and make websites and climb all the mountains on Skye) all in one lifetime.

He moved the printer and plugs and phone points and wires in to the spare room, no problem. And, of course, his paints and easels into my room.

Olivier is sensitive to The Artist. He does not play a radio. He shows up on time. He says 'Perhaps I should do this bit first as it makes the most noise....Then, when Julian is working I can do the quiet things. I have a new machine that just goes SHHHHHHH...'. Olivier is from the North.

We may even have Mallow...er...Cuckoo gallery by the time I get back from two months in England.

Meanwhile, the wildflowers continue to amaze. Wile pyramid orchids, wild gladioli, broome, poppies, and the Provençal sage flower which, Mmme Chauvet assures us, when boiled down with Eau de Vie, makes and excellent remedy for digestive problems.

Life in the Cuckoo

2009-05-06T18:47:00.006+02:00

When we arrived in L'Hameau des Cougieux (as it was spelled then) - what, six years ago? - we were told by the estate agent that it was named after the 'pink flower that grew in the spring'. This we took (I can't remember why now) to be the Mallow flower and we decided we lived in Mallow Hamlet. We liked Mallow Hamlet. We were planning purchasing Mallow Press.com on which to publish various books about life in the Mallow. When the mallow sprung up in my flower bed I thought twice before cutting them down since they were so authentique. One day the mayor changed Cougieux to Couguieux on the sign because 'that was the correct Provençal spelling'. We changed our pronunciation (making the g hard) and spelling accordingly. Proudly. And now, a new Parisian neighbour arrives ('oh we'll just rent for a while and then find somewh....ohmygod, we never want to leave this exquisite magical spot) and tells us Couguieux is a bastardisation of the Provençal cougious which of course means Cuckoo! (Durrr). And tonight I go down to the new Cellier du Ventoux in Bedoin to get our daily ration of one bottle and he is playing Provençal music and it turns out his son is a professional Provençal folk musician and he is very interested in Provençal culture and he has a Provençal dictionary behind the counter and...well of course it is cuckoo!

Cuckoo Hamlet? Cuckoo Press? Life in the Cuckoo?

We have been walking around today in a daze, me practicing, him painting, both lunching and checking the artichokes and all the while bursting out with 'coucou, coucou', just to see how it tastes in our mouths, our new name.

I like it, because I love the round sound of the birds in the morning, especially when they trio with the recently arrived golden oriole and the hoopoe. Julian thinks there are overtones of cuckoo clocks and cuckold. I say beh.....

So here I am on the terrace, thinking how awful it will be to leave this emerald poppy dotted paradise and go play Beethoven in the Cotswolds next week. Julian is upstairs having his shoulders and back (knackered from peony painting) rubbed by our excellent Californian masseuse. Linseed oil is being sundried on the stone bassin. OK and yes I do have a glass of rosé in my hand.

Life in the Cuckoo...hmmm, cuckoo life? life in the hamlet of the cuckoos?... is very tough, as always.

smelling the roses

2009-05-04T22:13:00.001+02:00

May day.

2009-05-01T14:59:00.005+02:00

It is May day. It's the fête des travailleurs. It's a voluntary day off for Julian - the day Mo will be unveiled to Mo herself; a day for retraining roses and digging holes; for stroking cats in the sunshine; a day of green, of podding, of fecundity and planting seeds, of small figs and furry almonds with echoes of maypoles and morris dancing on the village green back home, and a cycle ride up hill through an emerald landscape to lunch and down hill home again.

And on this day it occurs to me that many of you have shown interest and concern in our own seeding process, and that to some I owe an explanation. It is such a personal and private process I have not wanted to write about it much, but this is where we are:

We have had our dossier in Mali since February last year. In March 2008 we paid our Bamako lawyer a handsome down payment and took a trip to meet him. He was stuck in Madagascar. The trip, of course, was extraordinary. The two orphanages which we visited tore us apart - so many souls to put in our pockets and take home; too many words and emotions and books to write.....

More than a year later we are still two and still in the dark. A commission has been and gone and we were not selected. In January this year, finally, I met our lawyer - tall, charming and so handsome - in Paris and he explained that one of his clients, though she had been selected, had not responded; that if she didn't we could take her place; that he would know by wednesday; that I should call him wednesday; that he had a sixth sense about this. I did call him, on skype from a pub in London. His number was no longer in service. Five months later we have heard nothing more. I presume he is still stuck in Madagascar....

Meanwhile, through a delightful collector of Julian's paintings who has himself adopted there, we became interested in having a sibling group from Haiti, for which country I have been compiling a dossier for the last five months. Now here's the rub:

If I send off the dossier to Haiti next week we will most likely be attributed two older children (three and six maybe?) immediately. This would mean photos, love, and it would mean family at last, in our hearts. And of course a down payment of 8000$. However, the procedure in Haiti is such that we would not be able to bring these - our - children home for two years. Meanwhile, should we be accepted in the next commission in Mali, which may or may not be in October, we would be attributed a baby within a few months and would ba able to take him or her home immediately, at which point we would lose our right to adopt 'our' children in Haiti. We could then, if we so wished, reapply to the French authorities for a new agreement (a year's process with yet another home study) for those children, but with no guarantee of being accepted or the children still being available.

We have been agonizing over so many things, but mostly: How could we bear being attributed a child or children that we then were forced to reject? I am not a depressive person, but I felt myself ceasing to feel. Anything. Joy at a blue sky, pain at a cat's wound; pleasure in playing the cello....something was wrong.

Luckily, our friend who recommended the lawyer in Mali is a bit more ballsy than me and, bless her, she called up both the orphanage and the office that deals with the adoptions in Bamako on our behalf. She ascertained that our dossier did exist, had been renewed and that indeed we did stand 'a good chance' of being selected at the next commission.....

With some regret, (so much support from Eric, Conor, Gladys...) we have decided not to send the dossier to Haiti until we know about the next commssion in Mali.

Today I am loving the blue sky, enjoying my scales, celebrating the season of green and of growth, cuddling a cat...It feels like the right decision. For now.

Holidays?

2009-04-26T17:13:00.003+02:00

Looking for a B and B off the beaten track in Italy this summer? Check out my Mum's exquisite trulli in Puglia.....

Paris

2009-04-24T17:17:00.007+02:00

It's always hard to leave home, especially when the asparagus are out, gathered in little bunches tied with raffia at the local farm shop, costing one euro, when our first lettuces have grown, and when the dandelion leaves are young and we have just discovered a new organic white wine that happens to accompany them all very well.

The forecast for Paris was dire. I was nervous about a physical theatre piece which didn't exist yet and which I was performing in three days, and Julian was nervous about whether or not he would be able to paint streets, bridges and rooftops in the rain instead of sunlit irises.

The project 'Rope and Strings' gathered force from the first day. The miracle of creative process never ceases to amaze me: Six people gather in a room with a rope, four oranges and a pile of twigs, and at the end of three days we have a piece of musical/physical theatre which has never existed before, but not just that. We have magic.

Why, why why, don't we do this every day, each and every one of us? With our families, friends, enemies, priests, builders, hairdressers....?

It was an inspiration to work with Jos Houben whom I have admired for so many years in Theatre de Complicité; to talk about movement like music, in terms of colour, architecture, accent, polyphony, melody and counterpoint. I particularly appreciate his insistence that this be not for us, between us, but that it communicate something to the audience...I was knackered but on such a high...

....and then it was over. Our presentation. Gone, like the sand mandala. We are dreaming Edinburgh, Brighton, Avignon 2010. New York. San Fransisco..... but we have no bookings as yet.

Check out the pictures and if you know anyone who is interested in funding such a project in any way (in terms of a residency, or someone who has a space begging a piece of rope magic) I have no hesitation in asking you to please get in touch.

Meanwhile the sun shone on Paris and on Julian who, based in our friends' flat near the Pantheon, velibbed around (I used to think the Paris metro was romantic) and turned out a
cracker or two....

Brought to Fullness

2009-04-14T16:52:00.005+02:00

Easter time is made meaningful to me not by chocolate (actually that's rubbish - I would have killed for a Cadbury’s creme egg on Friday) but by the prayer that is playing the St John Passion. In France Bach does not make much of an appearance and it has been almost six years since I have played it but last weekend, having meditated in the cloister, I sat once more next to the evangelist in the cathedral in Aix en Provence colouring his story, ripping at the string during the renting of the veil, warming up the tone for the purple robes, purifying it for Mary Magdalena, stabbing at the note like a sword, and I felt cleansed. I am not religious in that I do not follow a single religious doctrine, but I cannot think of anything more spiritual than the moment after the crucifiction, when Jesus sings his last words: Es ist Vollbracht (mistranslated often as ‘It is finished’, but meaning something more akin to ‘All is brought to fullness’) and the gamba solo that follows; the melody that sings more than silence itself could of peace, quiet, stillness and serenity, and then (as if that weren't enough) the continuo aria that is possibly the most joyous illustration of release ever written. The work makes me contemplate my life so often filled with fear - of dying, of letting go, of trusting the next step - and I am reminded that the next step may be paradise, it may be hell, but one thing is for sure, it will be.

( – and I have to confess I might have to spend some time in purgatory too because my first F sharp in the gamba solo was flat…..)

And so the fullness of the season is testing me in the same way. Last week the almond blossom was rent from the trees by a piercing wind, this week the cherry blossom may or may not survive the storm, next the purple cherries will appear, then disappear (not without having lined our stomachs), then the blood red poppies…..Every week, almost every day, there is something to hold on to, about which I can say, surely THIS is the most beautiful blah ever’, and each week, it is taken from me, it appears to die. Or is it merely a transformation? Bud to blossom, blossom to fruit, fruit to seed..... It's the same story.

Meanwhile, we enjoyed our walk in paradise this morning and I am enjoying being a free woman having sent my first draft off to my dear volontary editor and promised her not to tamper with it until she gets back to me.

market day

2009-04-06T15:06:00.000+02:00

Gisele Edwards

2009-03-22T13:26:00.004+01:00

Here Gisele is in rehearsal for a project with Jos Houben - a founder member of Complicité - around the subject of strings and ropes. We (Gisele, three cellists, four cellos and percussionist) will produce a taster evening in Paris at the end of April in the hope that we can get funding to create a show.

First blossom and first draft.

2009-03-15T18:28:00.003+01:00

Two weeks later than last year, Provence is in bloom. If you look behind the blossom you can still see the last (?) of the snow on the mountain.

The air smells of violets. I have a tan already as I have been sitting out on the terrace in twenty degrees, cuddling an ill cat, working my way through a walnut tart inspired by a walnut painting and reading through my first draft. It's off to my first reader tomorrow.

blossom

2009-03-12T13:37:00.002+01:00

Spring is here. Babu is playing with blossom, Julian is painting blossom and I am planting Felicité, Cecile, Katherina and a Sceptr'd Isle, thanks to Roger's Roses.

Fifty

2009-02-27T18:27:00.008+01:00

Julian turned fifty in Barcelona, in the Xampanyet tapas bar, with house cava poured from lemonade bottles and of all things, tinned food: Tinned olives, mussels, tuna, razor clams and anchovies. Why, in an olive growing country and above all why in a port, we were eating tinned food I have no idea, but that's what you do in Barcelona, and, well, we'd had quite alot of cava but it was strangely sublime!

We took in a Sorolla exhibit and lunch in the coolest place we found at the back of the Santa Caterina market and then, after a good night's sleep, we wove our way back to the Northern part of the Costa Brava, in search of magical coves. The plan was that Julian would paint and I would...er... assist.

Being a daily painter's assistant can at times be pretty boring: It involves quite a lot of cleaning, bill paying and organising. There is the middle ground stuff which is fun in a meditative sort of way: searching for the perfect pear or jonquil, scanning, documenting and packing paintings, gessoing boards in the sunshine. And then, at least in the case of this daily painter, there are the perks, and this was one of them: Sunbathing! In February!

Julian, if I am near to the painting process, is normally painting me, so this time I watch. I watch a white stroke appear and stop a group of trees from falling in to the sea, a blob of light green making a pine leap forward into the foreground ('Oh no. I can't believe it. I'm such an idiot. I've just made this pine tree in to a grenadier busby hat.') greys and pinks and greens and yellows bonding and becoming rocks, ('Damd, why did I come out yet again without a sketch book and a pencil?'), the flowering red cactus disappearing ('Too many colours! Bleuurghgh.'). I begin to want to go behind the rock in the middle ground of the painting and see if there is a jewel like beach there. That's a good sign I think. Then I watch the first board with all its blobby rocks sleeping and its playful trees leaping and its sea just starting to glint being scraped. It is heart breaking.

The next board appears from the Pochard. The rocks start to turn pink in the setting sun. A man pees in between the two exact trees Julian has started to paint. I hear happy humming ('This is more like it. Now I'm having fun!) and then frustrated growling (I don't know what I'm doing!') and, after three hours, I see a second board wiped clean of every careful mark.

I realise that I have a little strap mark on my shouder where the sun did not hit. Sometimes being the assistant is a whole lot easier than being the painter.

Luckily there is always manana.....

gesso

2009-02-21T11:50:00.002+01:00

Gessoing boards in the sunshine.....

wool pile or wood pile?

2009-01-11T20:35:00.001+01:00

La neige, la neige, encore la neige

2009-01-08T10:18:00.002+01:00

Silent days on the painter's street, not a car passing, just a cat print or two in the snow....

A New Year

2008-12-30T17:42:00.003+01:00

I am, I think, looking forward to a New Year. We are both a little scared too. I am cutting down my orchestral work; teaching may well be building; we both have book ideas in various stages which could or could not do well; Julian will not paint a painting a day for the rest of his life; we may or may not have a third and hopefully even a fourth member in our family some day.... One thing seems pretty sure, this will not be our last Christmas à deux. ....

Luckily there is a new man in the White House, who seems to think that calm, courage and peace are more important than drama, fear and war....I hope his influence will spread. We will see it all unravel, doubtless, but I have never known so many tremors of hope coursing through so many lives at the brink of a new year. New era even?

We will celebrate with friends on New Year's Day with a walk, or sledge or ski up on the Ventoux, weather permitting, and Julian's special feast. Today we did the shopping at Les Halles in Avignon:

When we told the potato seller that we will be crushing the potatoes with fresh truffles under a chapon, he recommended that we have the big rattes which are more floury, because the Normoitier, though twice the price, tend to become buttery and melt when crushed. Then, the butcher recommends that we spare a hundred euros and get the Red Label 'Fermier' capon instead of the Chapon de Bresse, because it is quite delicious, even though the Bresse has been milk fed and the fat is better distributed. The fishmonger insisted that the best oysters were Utah beach, not Gillardeau (another fifty euro saving). I took a quick break while Julian got some necessaries from the supermarket, and had six fines et claires d'Oleron with a small glass of white in the little stall next to the oyster seller. Then, wanting to support our local businesses rather than stock up in supermarkets, we drove to our favourite wine makers in the region - Mireille and Jean Pierre Cartier at Domaine Les Gouberts. On arrival, I insisted we owed them forty euros for a 'vieux millesime' bottle of Cuvée Florence from our anniversary in July. We considered buying four more bottles for New Year's Day, it was so good..... She said the 2000 Gigondas really was very special, a little less animal, and would perhaps go better with the capon. Luckily it was half the price. When we left, having paid our bill, Mireille gave us a 93 Cuvée Florence as a festive gift. That's my kind of credit crunch shopping!

SHOP LOCALLY! SUPPORT LOCAL SMALL BUSINESSES! every pore of my body screamed!!!!!

Meanwhile we are back home, stocks are being made, carcasses prepared and trimmed. 'How does such a huge fellow survive on such a tiny heart?' says Julian, pulling the small organ from the capon carcass. 'And look at the liver! It's huge! Just like mine!'

The New Year's resolution? Goes without saying, I think.

Happy New Year!

happy christmas

2008-12-25T13:21:00.003+01:00

In the beginning she was all into nature and stuff...

but now, of course, she has turned in to a typical materialistic teenager. What can a mum do?

Happy Christmas!

Cottage Industries

2008-12-11T14:01:00.006+01:00

Last weekend I ran a little stand, enjoyed some mulled wine and mince pies and wept through In the Bleak Midwinter at Domaine de Mourchon's warm and fuzzy Christmas fair. We did well and and are only just emerging, both of us with various strains of the Bedoin lurgy, from a pile of bubble wrap.

We are padding to and from the post office under a blanket of snow. This morning I stood and listened to it; to the rustle, fizz, hushed splat and occasional thump of it melting......

Meanwhile, the offer on Julian's prints runs till the 14th December. It is free shipping to all subscribers on all signed, limited edition prints and a 10 percent discount on more than one. Subscribing only takes two seconds and you can do it here. They make stonking Christmas presents for all of those you know who long for these parts and I can add personal messages to friends, kids, Mums, kittens, Uncles and Yoga teachers too. I have a very nice fountain pen and decent handwriting (amazing one can still do it after all these years tapping away on keyboards with two fingers!). I do not apologise for this shameless plug. It seems an ideal time to be supporting cottage industries and in recent weeks, though often unable to see for the mounds of tape and stiff card and labels and foam padding, and even as I unpack six paintings that I have forgotten to scan, and even as I cough and splutter over one which then has to be reprinted, I have felt so proud of the creative hive we have here, and grateful that it is still buzzing.

Burano

2008-11-27T19:19:00.003+01:00

After a day in candy coloured Burano, Julian was happy to get back to Ventitan Red and Naples Yellow.

Venice 2

2008-11-26T21:47:00.006+01:00

It rained, it snowed, little doggy got wet...

And then the sun came back. In Taj mahal shaped blobs at first...

What are you lookin' at? said the Venetian.

At the butterflies, I said.

Happy Thanksgiving;

Venice is Empty

2008-11-23T21:15:00.002+01:00

Where have all the tourists gone? I haven't seen Venice like this since my first professional gig twenty five years ago, which was a month in La Serenissima with Claudio Abbado and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.......

Cadmium Red

2008-11-13T09:51:00.003+01:00

Babu hates Manon and Manon hates Babu. Babu, sensibly, has taken to living in Julians studio, but there are dangers. Yesterday Babu came down to have her dinner with a bright red paw. I was on the phone to my brother in Bangkok. 'Babu's hurt' I shouted up. 'Can you come and see her?' Julian came down. 'This is gonna take two of us' he mouthed. 'can I call you back' I said. Babu had by now spread a great dollop of cadmium red (highly poisonous) from her paw to her fluffy white tum and she looked like something out of the killing fields. We tried our best to clean her up with baby oil newly delivered from the UK and soap suds, but of course she licked most of it up. Here she is checking out a new set of strings sent, very kindly, by a collector of Julian's - Janet..... But you'll have to wait for the book for THAT story....!

Meanwhile, do we Hope or do we Despair?

Let's hope.

cutting the vines

2008-11-09T18:15:00.003+01:00

Just outside the house the vines have been cut. The cello is snugly in its case. TV series have been downloaded. I am applying for a job (yes a small job but perhaps an exciting one), Julian has been here looking at this mountain for too long and we are planning our yearly painting/writing trip to Venice. Life is tough, as always.

Green Tomato Chutney

2008-11-02T09:08:00.003+01:00

The green tomato chutney with Julian's special improvised recipe is all bottled up and waiting for its Postcard From Provence Christmas label. We tested it out with Corsican Ewe's cheese, a banon sec goat's cheese, and an organic camembert accompanied by the last garden salad. Yum.

Meanwhile the world waits with bated breath for a glimpse of hope. Here are "Tobias Wolf and others on the Bush legacy.

winter

2008-10-30T18:10:00.002+01:00

Today the wood was delivered, just in time for the first snow on the Ventoux. Winter is, quite suddenly, here.

bitter sweet

2008-10-27T18:21:00.003+01:00

There is a bitter-sweet thing about coming home from an opera run. First of all the opera gets under your skin and you wonder what, apart from get pissed on côtes du rhône and cuddle cats that smell of moonlight, you can do between 8 and 11.30 pm. (I know it's sad) Then there's the people. What was E's date like when she got home? Will A's shoulder get better? G's tendonitis? Will T and R get married? H accept the full time job? J pass the audition? D get her acupuncture degree? One gets used to hearing the daily updates. Above all, will M still think of me - the person he described on his facebook message as such a nice lady - when he eats pasta puttanesca in some hip joint when he is singing at the Met in New York?

M, our marvellous bass, our Figaro and frequent visitor to the pit (no primo uomo he, rather a primu emu) and I decided, over Thai prawn curry, that in the chaotic improvised scene before number 20, his 'mamma mia' and 'spaghetti' were getting a bit boring, so a list of Italian ingredients was, it was agreed, to be posted by me on his facebook page before each show, and he would try to slip the words in. They ranged from fagiolini (little farts as well as beans) to the aforementioned whore's pasta, full bodied tuscan reds such as brunello and montepulciano to strange rarely heard of pasta forms suggested by our Italian bass player (orrechiette, strozzapreti...) Each night we would sit through the hysterical laughter of the conductor and the orchestra members who could actually see the stage, and the odd polite twitter from an audience member (am I really allowed to have fun in mozart?) and wonder what they were all going on about. You can imagine how, under the black canope that was the underside of the stage, we looked forward to scene 20! M was a star. He kept us waiting and he delivered. Every night. (Well, except for one.) He even managed to get the word vindaloo (rhymes with ragu, I thought) in on the last night as he rushed out of that scene for the last time in a good while.

So, home at last.

I know! I'll make bitter-sweet green tomato chutney!

Well, perhaps i'll do that tomorrow.....

Meanwhile, Julian is upstairs having the first real massage of his life. It's taken me and Kelly a year to get him on that table with his ohthisshoulderhurtsandthattendonfromholding brushesandthebaseofmyspineouchand....
and now he's already talking once a week.

Cheers! I'll drink to that!

ps. Here's a painting Belinda did of me playing at our friends Max and Lucy's wedding.

One man, one thousand paintings.

2008-10-18T11:27:00.004+02:00

What was it going to be, the thousandth Postcard from Provence? It started, way back in February 2005, with an oyster……

On the eve of the Big Day I came home from Lille. We had forty-eight hours in which to shop – for celebratory food and possible subject matter - and celebrate, whilst Julian painted the subject matter, before it got eaten.

‘I’ve got a lovely moonrise I started last night to finish off for today so we have time..’ said Julian as he hauled my month size suitcase and squashed it into the mini.

Les Halles in Avignon was, as usual, buzzing with gastronomic delights. The oysters came first and this time we weren’t settling for the Fines et Claires d’Oleron. This was a day for the sweet fleshy Gillardeaux. In the cool bag we popped a turbot, swiftly filleted by the blood stained fishmonger. We considered and rejected some past subjects that had been fun and may have begged a repeat on the big day – the silver streaked John Dory glinting like streams on a summer morning, and the blushing rougets – and moved on to the wine section to buy champagne. At the green-grocers there were trompettes de mort, artisanal looking lemons just the right colour and sheen (who made it into paintings number 999 and 1000), There were jammy figs (who almost made it into 999). Around the corner there was a wild duck (‘Il faut en profiter’ said the butcher). There were a couple of goats cheeses wrapped in oak leaves from the man who has never forgiven me for suggesting chutney with pecorino, and we pushed the boat out with two slices of wild smoked salmon….

‘I suppose I could just do a tomato from the garden and explain that you have been away and I haven’t left the house, that I am enjoying painting everything within fifty metres of my front door…’

We arrived home and the mountain bowed in the hot autumn sun. Three hundred tomatoes, a sea of bright nasturtiums and three cats met me and Julian got to work. I cleared up a good many days of pasta and fresh tomato sauce for one, coffee cakes and late night hot chocolate drips, and prepared the surface for the chef. Over the next two days we had two of the best meals I’ve ever had.

Feast number one (painting 998):

Three Gillardeau oysters, a squeeze of a perfect lemon and Ruinart champagne.
*
Roast turbot on a bed of barley and wild mushroom risotto with a deglazed sauce made from all the turbot bits.
Swiss chard and tomato du jardin garnish.
*
Fromage
*
Too much wine

‘Then again, I could just do the remains of our celebratory meal. These oyster shells are pretty good. An empty champagne bottle or the cork…?’

The next morning we soaked up the autumn colours walking between fiery vineyards.

‘…Or a classic road in Provence…?’

Julian got to work early on 999 so there was time to prepare Feast number two:

Wild smoked salmon and a squeeze of a perfect lemon (no champagne left and we forgot the rocket du jardin)
*
Pan seared wild duck breast with caramelized figs, potato gratin and watercress and sauce made from the rest of the duck and the giblets.
*
Not too much wine (tomorrow was a Big Day)

‘Or maybe I should play a joke and not do a painting at all…?’

Brushes were cleaned before bed.

We slept well. Birdsong was infinitely pleasurable after the dawn TGV announcements and late loutish brawls I have been suffering from the Lille Citadines. There was skin, Egyptian cotton, a mattress I could actually relax into, and there was even a cat's face to purr good day!

The next morning had a nervous energy. We had coffee on the terrace. The subject matter was still not decided. I had a run, a shower and packed a week size suitcase while Julian hummed and cleared his studio in a rare ritualistic spree. I had arranged for a friend to drop me at the station, leaving him space and the bowl of cleaned oyster shells and the champagne cork at the bottom of the pile of wobbly bricks that serve as studio steps…..

Guardian at last

2008-10-12T13:35:00.003+02:00

Julian has finally made it in to his favourite newspaper so check out the piece by Jon Henley (last seen interviewing Greg Wise) in today(Monday)'s Guardian Shortcuts.

Meanwhile, one of the reasons for my recent silence is that, when I have not been playing Figaro, I have been busy weeping and giggling over a hundred stories as a result of This Project. Please, if you enjoy Julian's postcard paintings on a regular basis or own one but are not on the mailing list, click on the link and contribute yours!

There are other reasons for not posting which I cannot name. I intended to document this period playing Figaro but suffice it to say that one should never write anything on a blog which one would not be willing to wear on a T-shirt. Lots of stuff going into notebooks though and hopefully one day I'll write that novel.

Meanwhile, back home, apparently, the colours are turning and I am itching to get down South to take some pictures. That is, of course, after I have said hello to Oscar, Manon and Babu.

A month in the pit

2008-09-23T09:37:00.005+02:00

We were told, in an email before the first rehearsal, that there would be a 'surprise!'. What will it be, I keep wondering as I gobble up luxurious crisp paper versions of the Saturday Guardian and Sunday Observer on the four hour train journey to Xville.

Entering a month long period in an opera pit can, if I'm not careful, be akin to an interminable visit to the late David Foster Wallace's supermarket (a piece I urge you to read). I can be so brimfull of judgements: Her bow-arm is so rigid; his feet are in the air; she wants to screw her way to the first desk; he wants his girlfriend to play; she accents every note; he looks terrible in that tie; she has no energy in her back; he never says hello; she kisses the conductor too keenly; he....and so they can rabbit on, the voices in my head. What DFW's article reminds me so acutely is that those voices are all about me. DFW calls this our 'default setting'. He describes it thus:

'Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.'

So in the last hour on the train, as Northern roofs and cows whizz by, I decide to think about what I am really saying when I walk into the pit with my default setting. It is not a comfortable hour:

'My bow-arm is so relaxed; I can't feel my feet on the ground; I wish I was in the first desk; I'm scared his girlfriend will replace me; I only make one accent per phrase; My arms are flabby in this sleeveless top; I did my yoga this-morning; He hates me; Should I have kissed the conductor?;I....I....I....'

DFW, a man who has just killed himself, insists we have a choice. And I believe him. I am going to make a different choice this month. At least I am going to try. I am going to surprise myself.

We gather in the rehearsal room and KL stands to make her announcements. 'What's the surprise?' some cry. She is dressed, as always and like so many French women, immaculately. A short skirt and matching jacket in tea-rose tweed. She kicks up her heels and we see it - the surprise. Purple Crocs! 'Croc Madame' shouts an oboe player. I look down at my feet, which have rarely been out of crocs or Birkies all summer. I kick off my grown up shoes and start to play barefoot. I watch the first judgement arise. I watch it pass like a cloud in the first light. For a moment the sky is clear. Then the next comes along....

late tomatoes

2008-09-16T08:42:00.002+02:00

The last of the tomatoes? Today the first frost doesn't seem far away. Any green or red tomato chutney recipes welcome!