Oxford, Paris, and other things

 That will be absolutely a mess, more following my crazy thoughts... 'Tu ne connais pas Nevers, tu n'est jamais allée a Nevers!" Here is the beginning of a very famous French novel by Marguerite Duras: Nevers mon amour... Not quite. The title is 'Hiroshima mon amour'. But Nevers is in the novel... Not quite in a great light, the female protagonist was arrested and did time in Nevers just after the war as she had a relationship with a German soldier. So I'm a bit surprised to see that a street got Duras' name and she's considered a friend of the city! (But maybe she did stuff I do not know about) There is another literary reference, a bit far-stretched maybe... Madame de Lafayette's portrait of the Prince de Clèves in La princesse de Clèves. The Prince de Clèves, a man of honour, became Duc de Nevers by accident after the death of his brother. It is said Madame de Lafayette took him as model in her novel, one of the first in France.  If we go further...

  Burgundy in Paris                                                You taught me how to cut it                                  first the skin         silk paper that was (but not long enough to roll a cigarette with) a game of chess with the knife                 deep in squares            then across                  mind your thumb with the blade                     ...

 At last, after months and months refining the Ethics forms, I have obtained permission from the University to interview Wantage and surrounding villages residents.  The VDM Vale & Downland Museum Wantage has just advertised the project in their social media. The local library has also agreed to show the poster about the project.  So here we go! And here is the poster. Looking forward to listening to all the wonderful stories residents will tell me! So if you are interest, contact me at l.desligneres@surrey.ac.uk  

 How dare do I say 'my'?! hm? Oh well.  I will not speak however of friends as they do not like to have their picture taken.  One of my favourite Hamburg bit was 'the beach'... can you say it's a beach if it's near a river? I'd say yes, after all there are many beaches near the river Loire in Nivernais where my French family comes from. You have sand, you have people lying down on the beach, you have swimmers... well not so... it'd be a bit dangerous unless you really know the place... its shallow and then very deep as boats come and go there, and cargos as well. Opposite you have the port of Hamburg, looking a bit like the machines in War of the World. I absolutely loved it, especially after walking under the sun and visiting around, what great pleasure it was to ask for bubbly water and a bit of wurst and kartoffelsalat (sausage and potato salad), and then watch people go by or read my book.    My second favourite place was an art gallery in the most p...

 Yes, why? Why this interest in this country? I realise that, apart from my two home countries, this is the country I have most visited... why? Why did I go to big and small places such as: Schweinfurt, Bonn, Berlin, Lübeck, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Rheine, Hamburg, Köln (Cologne), Tübingen,  Sierksdorf, Nuremberg, Waldenbuch and many others!  Well, there was the question of education in France... if you were studying German as first language in highschool, you were going to a class with a higher level compared with English as first language. But then why not Spanish or Italian? Well it seems a lot of work was done to reconciliate France with Germany starting in the 1950s. Who would have thought that after years, centuries! of wars between the two countries, they would become close allies and even partners in Europe.                                        ...

 As I'm still trying to remember and make progress in German, I'm watching a lot of ARTE programmes . (I just searched for ARTE in my ROKU device and it appeared! It's not however the live television programme that you get in France or Germany) and I watched the documentary "Stockholm 1975 terror at the embassy" about an assault made by the  RAF (Red Army Faction) on the West German embassy . They took embassy staff hostage and asked for the liberation of all RAF members. I was 6 years old then but I do remember my mum speaking about 'la bande à Baader'. Terrible events, terrible violence. Two embassy staff murdered and two terrorists blown by their own explosives. One remained alive, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, served his time I suppose, and is now in charge of an art gallery in Hamburg. How strange.   But Karl-Heinz Dellwo puts the blame on having been raised in a nazi environment, that West Germany, after the war, did not do enough to purge itself from its nazi ...

 This is my second part of my (brief) reflection on Germany after my travel there (Rheine and Hamburg). It's called 'de l'Allemagne' after Madame de Staël's book. I have always wondered about the difference between a state and its limits and the official language of that state, during conversations made with complete strangers in trains or other places, I've discovered there are Swedish speaking communities in Norway and Finland - not to mention the USA, Hungarian speaking communities in Slovakia and Serbia, Russian speakers in Ukraine and Belarus (and of course Paris!), and so many others. But the one European speaking community that I have found a bit everywhere is... the German speaking one. They are, or they were, everywhere: Belgium, France, Russia, Ukraine, most other countries in East Europe. Some were invited by countries, some invited themselves. This is well explained in MacGregor's Germany: memory of a nation (chapter 3: lost capitals) Walking in ...

 No no don't worry I'm not going to redo a madame de Staël, a noble (well as far as I know) lady from France who wrote books at the beginning of the 19th century and is remembered mostly for her book de l'Allemagne.                                                               Bismark monument, Hamburg   (with panels explaning its history and controversy) I vaguely remember her from my highschool as she was included in the Lagarde et Michard , the annual textbook for French literature and culture. Each year was a new century and we started with medieval time when we were in first year so I believe XIX century arrived when I was a teenager. I vaguely remember, from the year before, the walking into nature of monsieur Rousseau, the spleen from the North (England? Scotland?) and the Sturm und Drang...

 For those of you who don't know, I've just registered as a student at Surrey University. It is based in Guildford which means it's not on the other side of the planet from Wantage! You just need to take the Oxford Bus Company X35 or X36 and go into Beauty (ie the countryside surrounding where I live) then arrive in Didcot. Take a train to Reading and change there. So yes really, not far! I plan to go there about once per month. It was only my second day of studies yesterday but I was given the chance to read some of my poems, so I said yes of course! I also heard the other students' work which was great. During the day, there was the Surrey New Writers Festival on campus and my mind (and bank account...) got blown away! I do admit that apart from Amy Key I didn't know anyone. Wow... came back home, around midnight, my bag full of books and I'm now trying to process all the fantastic comments I heard yesterday. It was the best literary festival I went to becau...

  Quand tu débarque à Oxford et la première personne que tu prends en photo est une travailliste au travail #AnnelieseDodds   La classe!  

 Despite being very tired I had a lovely time at the Cowley Road Carnival. Here are a few pictures, hope you like them!

 At the moment, there is a fantastic programme about Martha Argerich's life on France Musique. Martha Argerich une pianiste libre in 7 episodes. I've been listening to it at work as I've been doing some recataloguing of collection. What a life she has had. I have been very lucky to have seen her a few times playing in Paris, I'm not sure playing what, I only knew it was not French otherwise I would have remembered (sorry!). A piano concerto -was it Brahms? Did he write concertos for piano?- and some chamber music, which I enjoyed more.  I'm not sure where it was either that chamber music, a modern place, and she was not playing then during the concert. We are seated towards the back of the room and listening to music sans Martha when I heard some footsteps behind me and then nothing. I turned and looked, it was her, seating on the steps and listening to her friends playing.  I had heard, perhaps it was from someone at the Conservatoire, that she used to live in a b...

 After the pub and on my way back to South Oxfordshire, I bumped into a few dancers... here are some pictures... and of course, as often, monsieur Greenman

 I see today in the Guardian that the French court decides Ravel did not have help to compose Bolero . Oh well great, he wrote this on his own... but I can't help thinking, knowing and loving Maurice Ravel for so long, that so much of his music is coming from other influences... like other composers I suppose but still... why would the royalties monies just go to the Ravel heirs?  Why not??? Cuba for the Bolero , Spain for the Rhapsodie Espagnole and l'heure Espagnole , Madagascar for Les chansons madécasses , and the whole of the African American community for all the jazzy bits in his music? Le concerto en sol , le concerto pour la main gauche , bits of l'heure Espagnole and of la sonate pour violon et piano ... There are quite a few classical music composers inspired by jazz, Gershwin, Debussy, Bernstein , you name it     It's a bit like Disney taking from the folklore and making films out of it... only I don't feel that 'stealing' beauty and the be...

  Glimpses of Chris working under the sun Digging a hole because that was fun A pond? No. It became a swimming pool And there were jumps into the cool   of OX4 parties his young Werther look with sorrow sometimes, sometimes not his chiselled jaws and square glasses and did he wear a wig once? Goethe am Oxford   The cheekiness of Chris… I remember us two gazing metaphorically in front of a neon he had just planted into the soil at an exhibition in the Botanic gardens and we quoted Derrida and Bourdieu yeah right or one of them anyway while the intelligentsia gathered near us to gasp and discuss this piece of ….    shit I forgot what I wanted to say, oh yeah, that’s it The seriousness of Chris always ordering The same chicken tikka dish at Dosa Till last time I saw him, it was different then,  A faraway look, and no meat

  Fairacres is a funny place, exotic almost, to my eyes. It is both a carpark and a retail centre. Well in fact the carpark is for the retail centre. If you are luck enough to walk there in the morning there are no cars yet, apart from a few employees.  It was born not long ago, at least for the Easter part, as you can see from this timelapse video dating from 2021 The shops... there’s nothing exotic about them. It’s the same shops you find everywhere in the UK, or perhaps just England, I don’t know: Dreams, a shop for mattresses and all things related to sleeping; Pets at Home, a shop for everything related to animals including a veterinary centre; B&M a discount shop selling from food to toys to any house related gadget including vapes, I go there sometimes if I have a vape liquid crisis; a gym, don’t ask me the name I forgot, but walking near there in rush hour, you pass near people with not much one, running or walking on a treadmill; Homebase, a décor shop with pa...