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Christmas 2007
Dear Friends,
In my last letter I called
it a gap year but I came to believe that Sabbatical Year sounded more grown up
and serious. Whatever that last
year might be called, I was reminded of those tiresome ‘improving and
uplifting’ birthday cards, sort of Readers Digest cod-philosophy.
“Today is the first day of the rest of your life”,
Nevertheless I did feel this on and after 1st November last
year when I came back from Canada. I
put things in train to sell the house, pack up and move. I felt a great sense of
excitement, relief, of closure of the preceding 68 years, of looking to the
future, of taking charge of my life so that now, soon, soon after you get this
letter, as my 70th birthday approaches …read on.
Christmas was quiet
as each child and partner went abroad, but also there was a kind a fin de siècle
feel to it, taking ingredients from the cupboard, using up the last of it and
aware that I shall not replace it till I am installed elsewhere.
Drink up the wine in the cellar and almost resent some delicious honey I
was given (can I finish it by February? Is it too silly to move with half a pot
of honey?). But we ate well and had
some company on various days and I mused how much I do value Christmas even
though I do not believe in Christ as saviour.
As a matter of fact of course it is nearly all pagan, and the puritan
killjoys were right to disapprove. The
New Testament says nothing about what time of year Jesus was born and even if it
were in midwinter there would be unlikely to be much snow on the ground in
Palestine. The tree and the reindeer are obviously Germanic, and the
transmogrification of Saint Nicholas of Myra (or Bari) into the blessed Santa of
Neiman Marcus – his attributes: red coat with white edging, ditto soft bonnet;
a white beard and sack of purchases. On one side a decorated pine tree, on the
other, one or more reindeer.
Prof. Hugh Trevor
Roper in a letter to Bernard
Berenson December 1957 – recounting his own words on BBC to a young man with
‘religious doubts’:
Young
man … these doubts are nothing. You think certain doctrines of the Church [of
England] unplausible. Of course you are quite right: they are. But why should
you expect them to be plausible? How can you seriously suppose that doctrine
devised to befuddle the senses of illiterate peasants in the pre-scientific
Middle East should stand up to our exacting tests? The doctrine of the Church,
that extraordinary patchwork garment, which nevertheless has a certain archaic
beauty, is not tailor-made to fit you. It is a reach-me-down garment, somewhat
moth eaten in places, as needs must be; but it has fitted many a good man in the
past, and will fit you, if you wear it lightly and don’t go about drawing
attention to the admittedly numerous holes which now make up a major part of it
…
After
a rotten stormy and wet night, the first day of the year 2007 started clear and
blue and unwilling just to sit at home and wait for the next meal, Virginia and
I decided to make an excursion. Not
too far, not too taxing, and eventually hit on Windsor. and after a distinctly
mediocre lunch at Café Rouge served by a pretty Polish waitress (all waitresses
are now Polish unless they are Lithuanians or Lats), we scampered up to the
castle to discover it was closing at – well they closed the doors behind us.
Old people’s tickets, we avoided the Doll’s House of Queen Disney of
Windsor, and went first to the drawings gallery showing several fine drawings of
Leonardo, a Raphael and
Michelangelo, and a few Holbeins (superb) and then a collection of slushy photos
of HM. And so into the State Rooms.
Ugh.
Like
a set in a rather upscale Hollywood blockbuster for a Walter Scott novel (which
I suspect is exactly what it was designed to be) I can well see that it would
truly, truly impress a newly installed proletarian Garter Knight or a third
world Dictator: In fact they show a film of HM escorting just such a beribboned
black man to dinner … A few good Lawrences, a room full of truly good
Rubens’s and the Van Dyck children and a slushy flattering picture of Queen
Henrietta Maria (who was famously ugly) and a lot of large copies of good
portraits… oh yes, & a truly superb bronze relief by Adraen de Vries,
tucked away in a corner to make sure it is missed (but it wasn’t).
And then hurry, hurry
they’re closing, to St George’s chapel, the finest example of Perpendicular
(was it? never can tell one Goth from another) … but the chapel itself indeed
bleak with fake George IV woodwork and gilding like the rest of the castle.
The whole effect reminds me (as Buckingham Palace does too) of a grand
hotel, Helmsley Palace say, NYC. Yes
I know the hotels were made to look, and named, for palaces, but they now do it
better and the real palaces look phoney and a bit tired.
I wonder what the Elisée looks like inside!
And
so decanted back into the High St we drove home along the Thames via Runnymede
– where Magna Carta was signed. Why
does King John never get any credit for signing Magna Carta? Was his not the
first signature on a human-rights document? But he always gets blame instead of
praise. Maybe he had to be persuaded a bit, maybe he listened to arguments
before signing. So did the Parliament that took twenty years to abolish slavery.
John signed, he ought to be credited. England is proud of abolishing slavery,
because of Magna Carta, proud of Magna Carta, but ashamed of King John.
Into the New Year –
St Moritz. We were lucky. Global
warming or not, there was almost no snow anywhere else in Europe (huge dumps in
Santa Fe and Colorado). But they kept all the pistes open and though
hard-packed, we had two weeks of almost uninterrupted sunshine and skiing every
day. And be assured we ate enough - during this time the house was going through
all the procedures and processes of legal sale.
On the 26th
January 2007, four days before my sixty-ninth birthday, I signed the contract
that obliged me to vacate my house by 2nd March.
I had partially arranged for packers and made some arrangements for the
books but I had no where to go and only an intention of where that might be. A
bit scary – I have never been legally homeless before. ‘Unemployed of no
fixed address’ sounds as bad as it can be.
I sleep lightly and
usually wake several times in the night. But the pattern is puzzling.
I understand that the earth rotates in a day, which is what we call from
sunrise to sunrise (and the earth goes round the sun from equinox to equinox in
about 365 ¼ days). These are real figures and it is not surprising that
animals, including man, have adapted various rhythms to this cycle.
But it was we who divided the day into 24 hours which are quite arbitrary
– it could as easily have been 36 like the compass or any other number.
I know from my
reading about sleep and sleep disorders that nearly all people, even so called
insomniacs, spend about ten minutes getting to sleep and then sleep for almost
exactly 90 minutes and then either wake or go deeper. After this patterns vary.
And so it is with me – if I fall asleep at say 11.40 (not uncommon) I
will most often wake for the first time at 1.20 am.
Maybe get up, bathroom, straight back to sleep. 2.20, 3.20 .4.20 – how
does the body count the exact hours? Usually only out by one or two minutes
which can be accounted as the time it takes me to look at the clock. Maybe at
4.20 I get bored and turn the light on and read – after an hour I am sleepy
again and nod off to sleep again, maybe wake at 7.20
- rise. The minutes may vary depending when I first went to sleep, but
how and why does the body know to count such exact hours? Not every night but
surprisingly often. Our division of the day into 24 hours is arbitrary.
Or maybe it isn’t and the division does after all correspond to
something intrinsic. What?
London’s bus stops
are plastered with advertisements for The Prince’s Trust, a worthy
organisation under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, which seeks to channel
underprivileged young people into useful and rewarding enterprises.
The advertisement shows just such a dejected teenager below an
inscriptions that says:
God?
Father Christmas ?
Some people don’t even
believe in themselves.
Good strong stuff and
effective copy, and I have no problem with it. But the Prince will one day be
head of the Church of England (if he makes it to king) and I would have thought
it unwise of the Prince to associate belief in God with belief in Father
Christmas. But then there are lots
of people who seem to think of Father Christmas (Santa) as if he were somehow a
Christian symbol. Vide supra.
Tuesday 30th
January 9.00 am: My sixty-ninth
birthday. Unimportant, except that the next one has the dreaded zero on the end.
It is perhaps the first time in my life that I am all alone and doing nothing in
the evening. Well what is one day
among 69 x 365=25,185 days of my life? 25,000
days is quite a thought though! I
celebrated with my children on Sunday, SL invited me for a glass of Champagne
last evening, a few emails and SMS messages and not a single card. But the post
has not yet come and I am not very sentimental about cards. I am not very
sentimental about birthdays either – but I suppose we shall have to celebrate
a bit next year.
Last report from the
bird feeder. All the birds are back and seem to be feeding like mad, maybe
breeding already at the end of January. Traditionally the birds do note mate
till the 14th February (St Valentine).
And there is a pair of Robins, she well red breasted but thinner and
sleeker than the plump male. But no
sign of our cripple – did he die over New Year while we were away or was he
chased off by the breeding pair (they are very territorial). We fed him all year
from a chick but now he’s gone. So, we have a pair each of blue tits, great
tits, a whole shower of green finches and some sparrows too.
The occasional starlings, the fat pigeons and prowling below, the fox has
been making free in the garden. I don’t mind because he won’t catch the
small birds but probably chases away the cats, who might.
The beautiful big red
and white camellia is in full flower and gives me much joy one more time. But I
shall not see my beloved Pawlonia in flower again nor the great chestnut with
its Christmas candles (though the tree has some disease and is surely most
unhealthy later in each year). On
the other hand, renting a flat in Lausanne, I presumed that I would see Mont
Blanc instead, and have Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) at my feet and maybe import
some pots to my balcony which looks a bit bleak and clinical at the moment. In
fact I later found that though there are plenty of fine mountains visible, Mont
Blanc is not one of them.
I daresay this letter
will get a bit scratchy from now on until I am safely in, with a roof over my
head. Guy identified the flat on the internet – Tuesday 30th (my
birthday), VP went to see it for me and declared it to be ‘perfect’ for me.
Friday 2nd Feb. I flew to Geneva and by train to Lausanne for the day
to look at it and took it. Yes, yes, I’ll have it. At least I think I took it
but I went back in ten days to sign everything and arrange as best I could.
Details to follow. Try to arrange packing and books and things and sort all
details before that. All very
hectic. So, exhausted I spent Sunday just dozing in an armchair and reading and
doing nothing. I feel better for that but it won’t get the cellar sorted.
And the car file and …. Drama, email from agent saying the flat was not
to be had, had been let … ring everyone all of whom are on answering machines.
By the end of a sickening day it transpires they were talking about the wrong
flat, and the one I want is indeed ok but then another problem is that … no
matter. By Thursday we seem to have solved it chiefly by the high intervention
of my good friend CP (to whom I am now hugely, grovellingly, beholden). But I
shall have time to repay when I am there and in. Two nice girls and a strong
young man worked flat out for two days (8th/9th Feb) to
pack up all my books and then two vans took away 115 cartons. After being
briefly waist high in cartons, the book shelves are now bare, except I have put
other things in them to some extent, things that were on the floor or under the
chairs and tables etc. But there is
space. What there is not, is a single book. So as I sit exhausted there is
nothing to read. I have been
through the paper exhaustively and I am holding back (will I succeed) on the
last number of The Economist. They have been warning, increasingly hysterically,
that the subscription is running out, and this one announced it was the last.
That’s alright – I shall buy them on the bookstands as I go and
restart when I am settled in Lausanne. And
I did single out a few books to read in the inter-regnum including Thoreau with
whom I have struggled so long – with no choices I may finish Walden and then
hurl him forever away.
But I did finish
another life of Alexis de Tocqueville and found that in old age he loved nothing
better than reading the autobiography of Edward Gibbon (of Decline and Fall). So
I went to the London Library and got it out and hallo, maybe I did know in some
distant recess of the brain, but I had certainly forgotten. Gibbon spent a
couple of years in Lausanne and wrote a ‘Souvenir de Lausanne’ apparently in
French. At least there is nothing to indicate a translator – so I shall
restart my French language course with that. Later he came back (see below).
In my attempt to
drink up the cellar (I failed) I enjoyed some rather good wines, offering to all
and sundry and oh, isn’t this fun. And all those things in the freezer.
Though as for that the removal man told me they have moved freezers full
of contents, and plugged them in overnight still on the van and then started off
again in the morning without mishap. I have about 14 more days here to eat it
all – must not buy anything except bread and milk and a bit of lettuce – but
I cannot resist a few oysters and above all the fine kippers. I shall miss
those. 12th Feb. back to Lausanne, sort out legal matters and … but
I am already bored with London and Clapham and I want to be IN the new flat and
sorting my things and arranging and hanging and wait… I do not even have a
lease yet. Hold it. Calm down.
Many people have
asked what my children think of the move. In truth it never occurred to me to
ask them, nor have they offered other than practical advice – mostly to throw
things out. With telephone and email I shall have nearly as much contact as
heretofore and besides, if one or other of them had been offered an attractive
job (or spouse) in Australia or Los Angeles I hope, and I am sure, they would
take it without qualm, not wondering what might happen to papa. And quite right
too, they have their lives to live and I must get on with whatever will be left
of mine.
12th
February there was a light drizzle and a grey sky in Lausanne – and the
following morning it was worse and made me think maybe V. was right to deprecate
the area on climatic grounds. But then by midday the sun came out, shining,
sparkling and brilliant upon the lake and the mountains beyond, in France,
across to Evian and Thonon were revealed with a dusting of icing sugar snow
which made them look crisp and inviting. And as I drove into the city the whole
atmosphere lifted and became altogether winter-cheerful, not too cold, bright
and clean.
Of course I was not
on holiday and had to start to get my head round the mind blowing bureaucracy of
em/immigration. By Thursday I felt I was winning, thanks in part to the kindness
and efficiency of several people, in particular the P’s, who also gave me a
bed. As of old, and without any corruption, it nevertheless helps to have
friends in high places. Not only to pull strings (he said it was more like
pulling a huge rope) but also because others, anxious to please HIM, become
helpful too. Maybe it would have been alright anyway but that is how it felt.
Certainly I got good comfort.
Exhausted I collapsed
and slept fully eight hours – unusual for me – and felt better for it on the
last day. Ring everyone again to make sure everything is ok. Seems to be. Go and
look at another house which I certainly shall not buy (but everyone is suddenly
tumbling in to try to sell to me). Until I am IN the new place I shall not start
looking for a permanent abode. Maybe this IS a permanent abode.
By the Swiss Cantonal
authorities and others I am repeatedly, understandably, asked: Why Switzerland?
Why Lausanne? Why indeed?
I have often been to
Switzerland on holiday and I have done business in Switzerland over many years
and always with pleasure and mutual advantage. I have come to have Swiss friends
and expatriate friends living is Switzerland.
Now
approaching seventy years, my family adult and independent of me, I feel it is
time to retire to a congenial place. Switzerland, a geographically central, well
organised, secure and efficient country seems totally suitable. Why Lausanne? I
speak French reasonably well; good communications, proximate ski slopes and
airport (Geneva):opera, theatre, concert hall, good food and local wines – I
believe I can be happy here and maybe even contribute something to the cultural
life of the city. I hope so.
Retire? What is
retirement? Should I not look at
art, not sell something if I get the right price (or need the money)?
Buy something I like that seems good value? Broker a deal that leaves a
commission? But I shall seek out less business, seek out more pleasure, go to
museums leisurely, and ski, and enjoy the sunlight on the snowy peaks, the
grassy slopes and the sheer rocks of the mountains.
Since
there's no help come let us kiss and part.
Nay I have done; you get no more of me.
And
I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That
thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake
hands for ever; cancel all our vows.
And
when we meet at any time again,
Be
it not seen in either of our brows
That
we one jot of former love retain.
Now,
at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When,
his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When
Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And
Innocence is closing up his eyes, -
Now,
if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From
death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
Michael Drayton
But no, there is no going
back in life. Sixty nine years in
England is enough. England gave me my education and my language; two careers,
two wives, two children. I think I have done all I can do from England, from
here on I would only be repeating and recycling - it is time to move on and see
whether a new life in a new place with new people can give a new perspective,
new horizons. So, like a lover taking a slightly wistful and half regretful
leave, I shall go. But note that I go by unforced choice; It is not at all
really sudden either – only the
sudden fruition of long standing thoughts and plans.
I left London as dusk
fell and drove toward the channel. I ought I suppose to have felt some emotion
but Lewisham in rush hour was as dreary as when I used to live near there: I
reached the towers and ogival arches of Faux Gothick Eastwell in two hours and
all I felt was tired. A decent if
unremarkable dinner, a glass of Sancerre, and then a cigar I did not really
appreciate before a joyless ‘olde Englishe Logge Fyre’ , freshly stoked for
my benefit in an otherwise empty lounge. I read the IHT I had not looked at all
day and that was hardly inspiring, so to bed by 10.00. The effect of all that
oak panelling was rather spoiled by The Burlington Magazine I had with me,
displaying on the back cover a real and beautiful bust of Christ from the early
16th century. Not really Gothic any more, but THAT’S what Gothic
should look like, not all those phoney copies of distorted jesters, constipated
in their hunchback long pantouffles.
Dawn breaks in gentle
rain from a grey sky. The
right day to leave England forever. Not forever of course but probably the last
time as resident. By the time I got to the terminal the rain had settled into a
downpour. Go. In truth this is no big deal. There is a dream of a united Europe
even though Switzerland does not formally belong. Switzerland lies at the heart of Europe, and it ‘feels’
very European, whatever that might be thought to mean.
Edward Gibbon, author
of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and perhaps the
founding father of modern history, left England as a young man, for Lausanne on
19th June 1753. “We … crossed the sea from Dover to Calais,
travelled post through several provinces of France, Picardy, Champagne and
Franchecomté, by the direct road of
St.Quentin, Rheims, Langres and Besançon and arrived on the 30th
June at Lausanne …” This is
exactly the route I took in eight hours or so on 27th February 2007.
In fact five days later I interrupted my unpacking to attend the fair in
Maastricht; and Gibbon too, on his return to England, in the Spring of 1758
describes “The jealousy of war prohibited my passage through France, but I
assumed the name and dress of a Swiss Officer in the Dutch service, without
sufficient reflection of the danger of a discovery and the guilt of a disguise.
… the journey was slow and pleasant through the provinces of Franche-Comté,
Lorraine, Luxembourg and Liège. After dropping my two military companions at
their garrisons of Maestricht and Bois-le-Duc, I indulged myself in a short
visit to The Hague and Rotterdam”
…”
In fact he paid another
visit to Lausanne in 1763, stopping in Paris on the way “At home we are
content to move in the daily round of pleasure and business; and a scene which
is always present is supposed to be within our knowledge, or at least within our
power. But in a foreign country curiosity is our business and our pleasure; and
the traveller, conscious of his ignorance and covetous of his time, is diligent
in the search and the view of every object that can deserve his attention.
I devoted many hours of the morning in the circuit of Paris and the
neighbourhood, to the visit of churches and palaces conspicuous by their
architecture, to the royal manufactures, collections of books and pictures, and
all the various treasures of art, of learning and of luxury.
An Englishman may hear without reluctance that in these curious and
costly articles Paris is superior to London,
since the opulence of the French capital arises from the defects of the
government and religion. …. “ Eventually,
some twenty years later, he retired
to Lausanne and spent the rest of his life there, only occasionally returning to
England. And on my first visits I feel like that about London now.
“From
my early acquaintance with Lausanne I had always cherished a secret wish that
the school of my youth might become the retreat of my declining age. A moderate
fortune would secure the blessings of ease, leisure, and independence: the
country, the people, the manners, the language, were congenial to my taste; and
I might indulge the hope of passing some years in the domestic society of a
friend … … Before I could break my English chain, it was incumbent on me to
struggle with the feelings of my heart, the indolence of my temper, and the
opinion of the World which unanimously condemned this voluntary banishment.
In the disposal of my effects, the library, a sacred deposit, was
excepted… … from the garden a
rich scenery of meadows and vineyards descends to the Leman lake, the prospect
far beyond the lake is crowned by the stupendous mountains of Savoy.
My books and my acquaintance had been first united in London; but this
happy position of my library in town and country was finally reserved for
Lausanne…. “ And so on. From my
window, the vineyards between me and the lake at Ouchy have been rather built up
and my books are still in the cellar (but they are here). By good fortune and design I am delighted that the first book
I have read here is the Autobiography of Edward Gibbon.
18th
March. Fed up with opening boxes and stowing things. I have been on the go
nearly three weeks including the excursion to Maastricht.
Sunday morning Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne at the Salle Metropole.
Quite a nice 1931 building, clean lines of the period, a bit fascist
looking in truth, because of the date, glass,
marble, concrete. The interior a bit basic and the seats no more
comfortable than Blackheath used to be, and a slightly dull programme of Richard
Strauss and Haydn. But adequately played and enthusiastically received by a
large full house. The acoustics excellent.
Ever since Blackheath I am rather sensitive to this since ‘my’ hall
had such a fine almost perfect acoustic (it had other faults) – the Albert
Hall in London remains an acoustic disaster, but then it was built as a boxing
ring. Then I wandered up to the
Museum and saw a small exhibition of Noah’s
Flood scenes but only one or two good things; and a superb video by Bill
Viola. He has already become an ‘Old Master’.
Everything in walking distance – home for lunch.
So, first
impressions. The move is hard work and not finished. No doubt it will prove to
have been expensive (I have not had the bill yet) but ultimately it was
uneventful – everything happened. People
were kind, some even helpful, friends were amazed, some admiring and others
disapproving in about equal measure. No conclusions from that quarter. The one
thing I notice is that I do not feel too strange as I come into my apartment and
this is clearly because all my things are here. This is my nest, my twigs and
feathers, and if some are in different rooms and in a separated order, new
juxtapositions, that is fine. Some
are definitely displayed better than before. The kitchen is small and
unsatisfactory and I shall have to come to terms with that. I am used to a
bigger sink and a bigger hob. The
shower in my bathroom is mean and small and leaks. My shower in Clapham leaked
too but it was capacious. These are details, but what to do about the books is
another matter.
With eager
anticipation I took up Gibbon’s Journal de Lausanne, but it proved
disappointing. Mostly an account of
what he was reading: Latin authors with long quotes in Latin – I do not read
Latin and since the Journal itself is in French, this was too much for me. And
at the end of each entry a short account of what notables he had met and how
dull or interesting they were – a 250 year old gossip column. I don’t like
gossip columns or memoirs of name dropping banality in English and I couldn’t
do with it in French. I persevered for the sake of the language practice and to
be able to say I had read it [I now
have]. But
I mostly skipped the reading matter, ignored the Latin, and hoped for
some gem. Most of the gems were in the autobiography. I think it is the first
time I have ever read a book entirely in French.
Full moon over Lake
Geneva. Clear view over to the lights of Evian over the water. A few wispy bits
of cloud illuminated over the black sky. Pretty.
02.22. Go back to bed.
Busie olde foole unrulie
sunne, why dost thou thus
Through windows and
through curtaynes call on us ….
So John Donne nearly four
hundred years ago. To sleep well I need as near black out as I can get (and
never had in Clapham). Now I have roller blinds which do black out and I am not
sure I like them either. They are rather laborious to wind up and down though I
certainly sleep better. I am not woken by the light (I wake anyway) but once
awake there is something stygian that is unsympathetic. There IS something
thrilling about the sun pouring in through my south facing large windows,
glistening on the lake. The rollers
take rather to long to wind up – if I could just leap out of bed and throw
them open and let the light come pouring in… fortunately one blind
(‘store’ in French which I find confusing) is defective and has been removed
– I can whisk the heavy curtains open quite fast.
Try that. Actually the sun rises at the back and reflects off building
rather as it did in fact in London. Very light.
Jonathan Raban in
NYRB 12/04/07
Sullivan’s own church [RC]
painted in many hues and richly furnished with childhood memories, is seen
warmly, from within; those of the American evangelicals are regarded coldly from
without, as when he betrays a frank aesthetic distaste for the vulgarity of
their architecture – “mega-churches that look and feel like shopping malls
and foot-ball stadiums.” Every age gets the ecclesiastical architecture that
its social and political concerns warrant, and it’s worth remembering that the
great churches of pre-reformation Europe, which Sullivan loves, look and feel
like towered and battlemented military fortresses. Then, churches were built
like castles, to intimidate; now, like shopping centers and sports arenas, they
take entertainment rather than war as their model, which some might construe as
a humanitarian advance of sorts.
It
was absolutely delicious but all wrong and I regret I don’t like it anymore!.
On my way back to England I stayed the night in Chalons (formerly Ch.–sur-Marne
now, presumably for touristic reasons Ch.-en-Champagne; road signs sort of
alternate as if they couldn’t be sure). The town is conveniently on the way
and about halfway between Switzerland and London and the hotel has a restaurant
with a Michelin star. I have stayed there before and it is comfortable, not too
expensive, there is a market and a
charcutier next door so I can buy food goodies to take to England (formerly for
myself, now exclusively as presents) and I went down to dinner at 7.45. A glass
of champagne? – no I preferred a glass of excellent local white wine and at
the bar they brought TWO bon-bouches (bah – it used to be ‘amuse-gueule, but
even the French have succumbed to PC like the town council), oh, and then I had
a some escargots with capers and fresh baby artichoke hearts, followed by
perfectly pink little rognons de veau in a brown sauce with little, little
chestnuts and shallots (usually they can’t resist baby turnips these days, I
think only because they are available – maybe they weren’t) washed by a
glass of Bouzy Rouge. And I
demanded tap water, and then in the bar again smoked a cigar and had a perfect
Mirabelle served in a fine brandy bowl tilted sideways so the liquid was on
crushed ice. All very good, and refined and excellent – I have been eating a
bit like that in Lausanne, of course so it is no longer so special.
In retrospect I should have
gone to the bistro attached or another and had the same or similar wine,
escargot de Bourgogne (in garlic and butter) and the kidney’s in mustard
sauce, large and bloody and a Mirabelle maybe warm and a cigar and good honest
hard stuff and I think I like it better. The starred meal was in fact excellent.
But somehow it seems effete, lacking punch, weak, maybe decadent.
No doubt the mood will pass, and after too much steak and chips I shall
long for the refinements again and sing like Hamlet “Oh that this too, too
solid flesh would melt…”
Eric Zemmour in Le Figaro, actually talking about the French elections – my free translation: Economics has been emancipated from Politics. This is total separation, a real divorce. Politics got to keep the children – the social services - but doesn’t know how to pay for their dinner. Power is no longer powerful, hence the disarray of the politicians and the disappointment of the public who no longer believe in democracy.
In
some ways my mind still seems alright or as alright as it ever was.
I can still recite poetry from memory, especially if the memory is long
enough ago, I am learning French quite well, I can see flaws in quasi-logical
arguments … but oh, but if ever I get an Alzheimer type disease (may heaven
forefend) note, note this, it
started here quite insidiously.
Short term memory has of
course been deteriorating for a while – if I don’t make a list I shall
forget what I came out to do. Even so at the supermarket I may forget to look at
the list and fill a basket with other things I did not need. I come upstairs and
forget why and have to go down again before I remember. I open the fridge and
can’t think what I wanted to take out of it. I take that to be a normal sign
of the ageing process. But the
ability to mislay things en masse is new. You know, I had a pencil, penknife,
Customs Form, wallet a minute ago and now its gone. Search, fail to find, call
on St Anthony, still fail to find, later it reappears. Pipe, cigar (lighted), camera, cooking spoon come and go of
their own volition. And I have
started to DROP things, nearly every week something else: not serious yet, a
pencil, an onion, my reading glasses (nothing broken yet but that will come) I
NEVER DROPPED ANYTHING IN MY LIFE. Never?
Well yes, of course I did, but not much and rarely, not one of my faults.
Presumably a reduction of neuromuscular sensory coordination. I was (am?)
reasonably skilful with my hands, dentist, surgeon etc. but things are slipping
out of them – I hope this is not a metaphor as well as, or a progressive sign of, something worse.
I know there are
colonies of Brits living in Marbella who after couple of decades speak not a
word of Spanish – there are Pakistanis living in Bradford who speak no
English. I cannot understand this attitude. I admit that when I came to Lausanne
I already spoke adequate (adequate for what?) French. It was part of my reason
for coming here, but even if I had moved to Japan or Croatia, surely the first
thing to do would be to learn the language. Unlike the Francophones of France,
the Swiss often really do not speak English but they are not hung up about how
well others speak French. Their banknotes are written in four languages, their
second language tends to be German, which the young people mostly don’t speak
either. But they are happy with arm waving and long descriptive phrases - thing
on which to hang my jacket (what is French for jacket?) on a metal thing on the
back of the door = hook = crochet – got it. Coat is veste – vest is an
undergarment in England, a waistcoat in USA.
Crochet (might have guessed from acrocher), not in chrome, yellow metal
not gold – laiton, cuivre (the latter is really copper) – got it.
All that to ask where to start looking for a hook. Got it. But in the
morning when I wake early I put on the music programme and they gabble away in
French and the weather and the news and I am learning fast.
But I have not yet written a letter in French. Maybe it will fend off
senility.
Guy has got engaged
to Kitty, his long term partner. Hooray,
and they are much in love and arranging a wedding in May next year, in Italy.
Now that anyone can live together, the whole point of a wedding is just
that it is a public event, telling the community of their permanent
togetherness. And I suspect that
half the reason for the decline in the status
of marriage is the decline of community. But the statistics belie this at
least numerically – it seems that just as many people marry as ever before
(marriages per head of population) but those figures are made up of second and
third marriages. Also not a new
phenomenon, except that we are all living longer.
What they do not do is marry just because a child is on the way. The people who bought my house are deeply religious, rushing
to mass with the child every Sunday etc. – but not married. I don’t know the
circumstances but surely unremarkable these days.
I
had been tired the night before and went to bed early – probably fast asleep
by 11.00. Sleeping well I nevertheless woke before dawn: it was just beginning
to lighten up and I could hear the patter of water on the balcony outside the
bedroom window. A rainy Bank
Holiday Monday is about the same in London as Lausanne. Dull, persistent,
continuous rain from before dawn till after dusk, no appointments or social
gatherings, Evian still just visible over the lake but the mountains beyond only
vague shadows through the mist. If
the sun won’t come out, turn on the lights, all of them, turn up the radio
first, later a new disc of Heifetz (but
it can’t be that new – he died some ten years ago and didn’t play for 20
years before that. I bought it a couple of days ago.)
The danger is eating too much, but the safeguard is that I was expecting
to go out and so there is not much in the Fridge. I could of course still go
out, but it is not tempting. No, do a bit of house keeping, nest arranging work
(it needs it) arrange a few more items, clear the top of the Jacobean oak chest,
move some clutter from one place to another – but it diminishes each time.
And fill in the form from the health insurance people that I have been
putting off for two weeks (probably more like four). And the application for the
Swiss driving licence (should I, shouldn’t I?).
Paul Johnson, a
journalist I used to admire until he went soft, nevertheless can throw off a
spark once in a while: Giving a bad review to a book translated from the French:
“Of course this kind of ranting sounds better in French.
In the early fifties when I was a correspondent in Paris, I used
occasionally to transmit home similar diatribes by fashionable intellectuals. I
discovered that in English they could be condensed by 50 or even 75 per cent
without loss of meaning. Much of this book would benefit by similar
treatment.” They still teach
Derrida at art schools in England – he could be cut by more. On the other hand
I can thoroughly recommend “That Sweet Enemy” by Isabelle &
Robert Tombs, a husband and wife team, she French, he English, reviewing the
last 400 years of French/British relationships, wars and alliances in hilarious
and detailed disagreement. All
readers of this letter who are French or British or/and American (must cover a
large segment of my friends) should read it.
I wondered whether the US hiway is
related to their greeting (hi) - we spell High Road, the main street in a town,
and so sometimes talk of being on the highway (more often figurative - the
highway through life etc) to somewhere but not specifically a motorway. Ok, so
the Americans dropped the gh (German Hoch - all silent gh's in English come from
German ch) but what does their greeting "HI" mean? Surely not 'High'.
The American Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary is confusing – claiming
the usage hi as early as fifteenth century.
So I turned to OED and so it is, but not that word.
Hi is old, old English German etc which
ultimately gave us ‘I’ (me) and goes back 1500 years. But Hi the greeting is a form of ‘hey’ a call, or
arrest, or demand. I never liked it
and now I know I was right (recht). I mostly do not open emails that start
‘hi’. – none of my friends address me thus (though many use no form of
address in emails). Even so hi seems to go back to 1864 ‘N.American’.
But it is inevitable that I
compare French and French Swiss (La Suisse Romande) usages to English and
England. In a Francophone country I naturally hear it all the time. I have long
known that Americans ‘run’ for office, the presidency whereas the British
‘stand’ for Parliamentary elections etc.
And what does it say about England that a piece of music is ‘played’
by the London Symphony Orchestra but ‘interpreté’ by the same orchestra on
France Musique which I hear nearly every day. And this is not just verbal –
whereas Radio Three is content to ‘play’ the music and briefly tell you what
it was and who played it, the French also insist on telling you when it was
written, its place in the oeuvre of the composer, how the second movement
recalls certain other works, is or is not a masterpiece, how the ‘sublime’
transition into Fa majeur is rather like … etc. Naturally authoritarian, they
insist on telling me what I ought to think and need to know before I may have
their permission to enjoy music at 7.30 in the morning. Sometimes I switch to
Espace 2 which is Suisse Romande but suffers some of the same disadvantages
mixed with local news. Local news
can be very local. I have written
two emails in French – in emails I can get away without using accents, maybe
even fudge the gender endings of words.
“The exotic dream is at our fingertips as we have witnessed the
democratization of tourism; we can eat risotto in Hong Kong or sushi in London.
Enjoy opera in Shanghai or solve sudokus in the Times; explore the new orient
and discover the wild juxtaposition of bright neon lights against a backdrop of
ancient temples. We are no longer
interested in the exotic … but prefer to mix and match. The trend is
fusion.” This was actually
marketing copy for furnishing fabrics but I think they have a point. The very
word ‘exotic’ means (OED) ‘strange or unusual’,
something from far away and outside our experience.
But we’ve eaten the food, worn the clothes, played the games. Very
little can actually excite our curiosity or shock our sensibilities.
But what we may gain in reduction of prejudice and diversity of
experience we may loose in originality. Once we’ve all got used to everything
and anything we may lead a calmer life – I hope we shall not be bored.
Or we shall have to embrace scientific enquiry after all, which has
everlastingly expanding frontiers. But that won’t furnish fabrics.
Lausanne on the other cannot be
called exotic – from Google “The city has been
traditionally quiet but in the late 1960s and early 1970s there were a series of
mainly youth demonstrations confronted by the police that gave rise to the motto
'Lausanne bouge'. In a rare showmanship of anti-authoritarianism, the youth
responded by ascribing to the word 'flic' (cop) the term, 'Fédération
Lausannoise des Imbéciles Casqués'.
The
next vigorous demonstrations took place to protest against the high cinema
prices and since then the city has returned to its sleepy self.”
Obviously serious matters. I am told that the Swiss Army
only ever killed one man – and he was a striking miner in the 1920’s.
Is this true?
The technology is too clever
for the people. I give everyone my telephone number and some of them write it
down or enter it into their phones etc. That is the number I want to be called
on, which has an answering message, service etc.
For a number of reasons I also have a fax line but in fact I have no fax
machine.- so I put another hand set on it and use it as an occasional outgoing
line to keep the incoming line which I have given everyone, clear.
But no, because nowadays people see and record who has called and on what
number, they must call me back on the fax line, and complain that they are
unable to leave a message. But I
have never given this number to anyone, don’t even know it. And of course the
caller complainant does not know what number he called either. The same with
email but at least it gets through. I tell everyone alex@wengraf.com
but swisscom in their unwisdom of totalitarian marketing ploys insists on not
letting me switch off the information that my emails go from a bluewin URL.
So people send back emails to the ‘wrong’ address though it does get
through. Should they alter their
address book? NO, the whole point of having a memorable email is that people can
remember it without looking it up. Ugh. Just before this letter goes out I think
it is fixed.
Sloes tend to ripen in England
in September and in Charente (the only other place I have picked them) at the
end of August but it seems they are earlier here. My lovely framer/gilder lady
told me she was going on holiday to their little hut in the mountains of Vallais.
In truth she was a little coy about when and where she was going and then she
told me she liked to pick wild raspberries in the hills. In fact she makes up to
70/80 kg of raspberry jam. In fact the secret is that as she is her own boss,
she takes ten days off when the raspberries are ripe which it seems is at the
same time as the sloes, sometime around the Swiss National Fest (William Tell
Day on 1st August, a truly Federal holiday) . They know nothing of
sloe gin here and sloes have too much pip for jam, but I suppose for the pectin,
she boils the sloes very thoroughly and discards them, but then makes the
raspberry jam in the sloe syrup. Sounds wonderful and she has promised me a pot.
It still sounded like such a good idea that I wrote it all down here.
Later I went back and gave her the recipe for sloe gin I had solicited from
England (I doubt she will try it); but in doing so I discovered that I had quite
misheard or misunderstood the French and she hardly knew what a sloe is.
Too bad really.
The late Arthur Marshall (a
very amusing journalist) was once asked what he did with his old clothes “I
fold them up neatly and put them on again in the morning!”.
During forty years of what passed for a business career I wore a suit and
tie every day and hated wearing the same suit two days running.
So I traveled with at least two mostly three or four suits, as many
shirts and ties as there were days in the journey (often fourteen) and underwear
etc as well – and because of my flat feet, several pairs of shoes too. I never
mastered the art of traveling light and I still can’t. Now with so many
restrictions by airlines I really do prefer to go by car if I can and throw
everything, two or three or four suitcases of different sizes in the back. But
here in Lausanne I often have few appointments; if the weather promises to be identical
and I dress informally, instead of hanging up my trousers I leave them out –
even so by morning I feel different and hang them away and wear a different
pair, different colour, whatever. No tie but ties
don’t take up much space and for four days in the south of France I still need
a big suitcase and … oh well, the car is big enough and Lausanne is so central
it is easy to drive.
My skin tans easily and I am
bored just lying in the sun. Hence my consumption of high barrier sun tan lotion
is almost nil. But if I do spend a
few hours basking I like to use the old Ambre Solaire a brownish oil graded 2,
which is fine for me and I fancy the oil is good for my skin. On such a day,
idly lying in the sun on my balcony I studied the ingredients of which the main
one is brassica olifiera. Hallo! Isn’t that our old friend Canola,
Colza, Rape. Google yes, indeed
rapeseed oil. But I have a bottle of rapeseed oil, extra virgin, cold pressed,
in the kitchen – read that label too. Good for everything except frying, keep
out of sunlight! Maybe
different formula! End of sunbathing for that day.
Incident: I read that the
airlines are proud of the fact that less than 1% of bags go missing! Considering
that they handle some 280 million bags per year (I forget the exact number) that
still leaves some 2.8 million bags going walkies and you have a chance of
arriving naked in one in every hundred flights. I think it is more often than that but it may depend on
criteria of loss. What is more impressive is the fact that they mostly do find
them and deliver them within a day or two. Or not.
At the beginning of August
Virginia showed up without a suitcase, lost between Rome and Geneva.
Swissport a separate private company handles lost bags and delivery with
impressive efficiency – but they do not want to be disturbed. Ring a number,
press in the reference code and be told they are dealing with the matter and
will call when they have the bag. After two days of stone wall, excitement, we
are told they are putting the call through – to another voice that for three
more days (exceptionally) cannot answer because they are ‘efficiently’
dealing with the bags they have. Try to ring Alitalia for information, press one
for ticket purchase (just now you can purchase the airline too) – press two
for all other queries. For lost baggage ring Swissport. Totally circular, totally
impeccably polite, impeccably opaque. No way to get through.
I tried an email and eventually DID get a reply to say the bag was in
Budapest and would be sent direct to Geneva the following night.
Five and a half days later it was delivered and we are supposed to be
grateful. They tried hard. If you want compensation apply to Alitalia –
nothing to do with the Switzers.
The
nearest church to me is the Church of the Parish of Villamont, indeed in the
Avenue Villamont round the corner. Vaguely
Romanesque in rough hewn stone, as if to withstand the blizzards of a Nordic
winter, metaphor for the temptations of an evil world. German speaking,
reformed, (Evangelisch), Protestant, presumably Lutheran,
associated with no saint’s name (unusual even for protestants in
England), they nevertheless have stained glass windows, mostly geometric but
also including a lunette of The Lamb of God holding a flag.
And they are double glazing it, even the pattern of the large rose window
to the East (this is not Chartres, but quite complex all the same).
The glass has been carefully cut out and clear glass panels are being put
on the outside. I asked, and was told that they will take down the coloured
panels, restore and clean them and replace them. Wouldn’t it be grand if all
churches were double glazed to save counter-environmental heating losses in
churches! 21st century religion includes the environment in its prayers and
good works.
15th
August – Ferragosto. Maria Himmelfahrt, Assumption of the Virgin.
Catholic Europe is on holiday today and so is neighbouring Valais, but
protestant Pays de Vaud, Lausanne (and England) work as usual. They had prophesied rain all day but I walk under a blue sky,
with a few wispy clouds which
quickly dispersed into a gorgeous, cloudless day.
But I had things to do, post office and market etc and hurried out before
nine – it was already warm, with the gentlest breeze. This breeze however, had
the smallest chill on it, which made it very pleasant. It seemed to me
absolutely not summer but the first day of a lovely autumn.
By eleven it was still warmer but walking in the sun up a Lausannois hill
was nevertheless possible. The sun was attenuated, softer, declining.
The forecast now shows all that rain for tomorrow.
Clouding over lightly by 5.00 pm.
It wasn’t even
anything violent or extreme. No heavy suitcase, or strain. I just bent over slightly, ever so slightly, as I undressed,
to lob my socks into the laundry basket and pop, ever so gently my back gave
way. Ouch. Straightened up gingerly, not extreme pain but aching and nagging,
some movements, some positions ok, but suddenly from feeling fine, I am an old,
lame, halt, old man. Slowly to pick something off the floor, lying in bed is
fine but getting up requires care. Fear of pain is almost as bad as pain. I had
intended to do some house work today – can I do it? Slowly perhaps. Suddenly,
living alone seems rather frightening. But the pain passed (mostly) and the mood
passed – bad night. And no rain yet, even bits of blue in the sky. By eight
o’clock it was raining lightly with a fresh wind off the lake – quite
pleasant really. Open the windows, cup of tea, go and get a paper and read how
badly the rest of the world in managing. Disasters far away are so comforting,
especially if you have mild back pain. When
my. books return I shall look at Susan Sontag
again “Regarding the Pain of others” Good book buried nearly as deep
in my cellar as under an earthquake, which the radio announces today in Peru.
But the book itself won’t come to harm.
I seem to remember
that the competition for the most boring headline would be won by “Small
earthquake in Peru – few injured” but today the camera crews are there
within hours and it is all over everywhere round the world.. In 1938 even
Czchechoslovakia was called “A small distant country of which we know
nothing” – but with TV and internet and blogs and things I suppose we do all
know our neighbours better. Is this progress? I suppose so though my Vaudois
still resent the Bernese invasion of 1543 and
I believe Carinthians (South Austria) still resent Slovenian (doing duty for
Serbian) wars only slightly more recently. The Bernese were finally driven out
by Napoleon, which makes Vaud one of the few places he conquered where he is
popular – but even that is 200 years ago. Of course he had the good fortune to
be defeated himself before too long, and several years to gild his image in St
Helena.
For the first time in my life I
can see why people become obsessed by the sea.
The lake (from the safety of my 8th floor bedroom window) is
endlessly changeable, endless fascination, now calm as a mirror glass, or rough
or both together, you can see bands of wind or rain moving over the face of the
waters, and the reflection of the mountains behind, sometimes invisible
altogether, sometimes crystal clear and reflecting, fresh and verdant, or white
capped, or snow covered, or rocky. And
mists in the mountains or clouds above or blue sky and rainbows, lightening and
thunder, and often several of these things in the same day, changing by the
hour, almost by the minute.
“Black
Mass – Apocalyptic Religion and the death of Utopia” by John Gray 2007,
p.132 Aristotle and
Aquinas held to a teleological view of the world that modern science has
rendered obsolete. Each viewed the cosmos as a system in which everything has a
purpose. Since Darwin, this view of the natural world has ceased to be
available. Nature is ruled by chance and necessity, and natural laws are
regularities rather than prescriptions for the good life.
If there is a realm of value beyond the physical world it cannot be
reached by human reason. [my emphasis]
After several weeks
of idyllic sunshine and coolish winds (a true Indian Summer as we used to say),
on 27th September the temperature dropped 10ºC overnight; I suppose
it rained too though I saw little inside – in the morning however the cloud
capped hills above Evian had a dusting of snow, and the white heads looked cold.
With the fields still bright green below the first rays of sunshine made a
pretty sight though the temperature was uninviting.
Looking out on the north side, to the park of Mon Repos (“if it
weren’t for all the houses in between”), and as I had also seen driving to
Martigny the day before, the leaves were beginning to turn.
The wine harvest is being gathered, there is a wine festival at the
weekend at Lutry (heurigen?), and everywhere else too I think. Autumn, harvest,
winter.
November: Impressions
of the first nine months living is Switzerland: I like it here and I like my
apartment. I like the landscape, mountains and waterfalls and snow and sun; the
weather is clement and fine unless you want the maximal heat of the south (which
I don’t) – it gets plenty warm enough for me. Of course I have not spent a whole winter here yet.
The geography is
nicely central for the south of France, (Provence in 5 hours) Venice 7 hours,
Basel 2 hours, Zurich 2.15, and
Geneva of course 45 mins; in Switzerland only St Moritz, is truly 6/7 hours away
and awkward. Language – many local people do not speak any German and a lot
speak no English either – but they are not tiresomely prescriptive like frogs.
Just glad if you can get by and be understood and tolerant of mistakes and
prepared to speak slowly to a foreigner without shouting.
Origins: Someone
described me as ‘mixed’. This I
am really not. All my four grandparents were from Vienna, and all generations
before that as far as I can tell. Two months old when I left you can count that
as ‘originally Viennese’ ‘d’origine autrichien’, but all my
‘nurture’, intellectual and professional and social has been English. In
England I used to say that my family came from Austria, but now that I live is
Switzerland – should I say “d’origine Anglais” or “Autrichien”? I
feel that the former would tell the enquirer more that he needs to know.
Besides, the helpful bureaucrats (vide infra) all changed the box on the
forms that asked for ‘origine’ from Autriche to Grand Bretagne because, they
explained, the origin requested is
my documentation, not my person. Documents before people.
But
the Swiss too, like the Americans (and increasingly the British) can be
hyphenated. Almost everyone I meet
here is ‘d’origine’ somewhere other than Pays de Vaud – Italian and
Portuguese seem common in Lausanne as well as huge numbers from the northern
German Switzerland: even Geneva or Berne count as foreign to the Vaudois.. My
lovely frame maker, gilder lady (herself from German CH) admitted that her truly
local husband was in fact from, well actually, from Neuchâtel (some 30 km to
the north). Here at last I can be truly English! Like all expatriates I become
more English the longer I am away.. The real German Swiss meanwhile make fun of
the Suisse Romande without distinguishing between Lausanne and Geneva.
The Lausannois, of
whatever origin, like to think of themselves as French but they are much more
Swiss than they think. Authoritarian, Protestant, law abiding, rule driven to
the point of jobsworthiness, no play or ease. Speed limits, zebra crossings,
Efficient,
The
Lausannois think of themselves as French and the French make fun of them as
peasants. But this they are not –
they are Switzers. The Genevois
disapprove of the Lausannois for being more efficient and call them Germans
(German Swiss they mean), who happen to speak French.
In this they are right – Geneva is much more French, the waiters ruder
and the food better and … stereotypes of course, but one can feel the
difference. Little Geneva has about 150 km of border with France and only about
30 km of border with Switzerland (between the mountain and the lake).
The Lausannois apply the
mind blowing bureaucracy of Switzerland with immaculate efficiency (which they
learned from the Bernese, during their 250 year occupation – they are detested
for it) but being a bureaucrat here is a service, not a source of power. The
girls and boys behind the counters are not surly and tiresome as in most
countries, but on the contrary helpful, and make useful suggestions as to how
you could get this form better corrected, more quickly. They will even give help
themselves and fill in some boxes for you, all with charm and kindness. It is
still incredibly tiresome to get a driving licence changed and you need to
produce your identity card (with out that you have no identity and don’t
exist) for the smallest thing. There was an article in the paper discussing the
distress of the undocumented – you are dead, but they’re nice about it, not
apologetic, must be done, but even a smile helps. I never saw a bureaucrat smile
at Lambeth Borough Council.
You would not expect
me not to mention food. The kitchen
in my flat is not ideal but I am making do and learning. I am sure I live
cheaper than in London and I eat quite well. I hate my ceramic top cooker and
the littleness of the oven is a joke. But I did roast a duck in it. In general
the food, both in restaurants and shops and the market, is MUCH
cheaper than London. Restaurants cost roughly in francs what they are in
London in pounds, but they are also less good than I hoped. I am shopping around
and have yet to find a really good butcher, offal is not available in general
except to order (as in London, except for strange parts of pigs). Lake fish is
boring except fera (which google/wikipedia says is extinct, but is widely eaten
despite google) and I miss the north sea fish and the good smoked salmon of
Wandsworth. I can get both but not exciting, rather tired and tasteless. On the
other hand I have found a smoked herring in a plastic bag that grills well into
a passable if rather salty, kipper, and I can also get a matjes (raw) herring.
I can get oysters which cost as much as in London (they are much cheaper
in France). The veal is not as good as the Dutch we used to get, tomatoes are as
tasteless and bright red and glass housey as Sainsbury’s. Fresh fruit is good
and some other vegs and salads, but I don’t really
like salads. I found a Cox apple in Zurich, and now I find they grow them
up the hill above Lausanne, called coxorange – hooray.
On the other hand the
market has a stand every week with wild mushrooms, Cèpes in season,
chanterelles, and white truffles promised too. And a mixture for half the price
(off cuts) which makes a wonderful ragout. I heard recently of an Estonian
professor, wife a friend’s brother who collected and cooked mushrooms. Now of course I don’t know which mushrooms they were
eating, but at this time of year I suspect that there, as here, the great
mushroom which the English call the ‘penny bun’ and the French call ‘cèpe’
and the Italians Porcini (little pig). And
in the Italian manner, I particular adore the head alone ‘a la griglia’ with
virgin olive oil and garlic and parsley or sage (ideally catmint – but I
can’t get it). My friend
described, and it keeps me awake, how she was shown how to remove the spongy
spore bearing area “to stop it being slimy”.
It was just this that confirmed me in my belief that we were indeed
talking about ‘boletus edulis’ or a closely related species.
Now to describe those
heads, when cooked, as ‘slimy’ is just possible, but it is a rude way of
describing the delicious, succulent, creaminess of this esculent fungal
flowering bodies of the spore bearer. To
castrate half the head, where resides the flavour and texture, soft and gentle
upon the tongue, seems pointless to the point of sacrilege. Why would I want to
eat it (admittedly without having paid quite a lot for it) if it were deprived of its features that make it so
worthwhile? I even find the stalks a little woody by comparison with the soft so
so smooooothe intactness of the head.
Soon the truffle
season will be upon us and the mushroom lady assures me she will have them. Not
the silly tasteless black French ones but the wonderful aromatic white Alba
truffles of Northern Italy just over the border. That beats even the cèpe, but
costs only just less than weapon’s-grade plutonium. But I shall not resist.
To
sum up, I am settling in well, settled perhaps, though it is odd to feel so at
home in rented property. Probably a function of having my goods and chattels
with me – I came with every last old cooking pot and tattered shirt, as well
as the art and furniture. But my old cooking pot serves me as well as it
did before and if I had to buy a new one it would cost £50/60 and cumulatively
I have a full house and NEED nothing of that sort. I threw away an old pressure
cooker (artichokes) and bought a new one. I have sheets from my mother still,
dead these forty years and more. I had to buy a new bed but kept the old one too
for spare and slept in it for a few weeks longer. I feel very much chez
moi here, all my toys are with me as I say, not just the art. In fact the art
looks well, I have hung nearly everything I have.
Lighting is still a
problem. There are no ceiling lights and no wall lights either - only floor
plugs. And the BOOKS. Nearly ALL my books are in the basement, all stored
in all those very heavy boxes and I don't know where to put book
cases. I worked out before I left London that I need circa 100 running metres of
book shelves (at 7 rows floor to ceiling that is over 14 metres of wall. Doesn't
sound much like that but I have NONE. If I really stay in this flat (280 m² -
sunny and light with a view of the lake and centre-ville)
I shall have to do something radical like dedicate a whole room
without pictures - hard. Even then I don't think I could get them all in. I have
abandoned Thoreau as unreadable. Too bad about Walden. Pretentious drivel.
Quite an eventful year I guess. Guy continues to work at his
bank and will be married next year in Italy. Luisa qualified as a solicitor and
was admitted to the Law Society in a fine ceremony. She has decided to
specialise in employment law which, as she explains, is very human based and
every company in the land is in need of advice on the subject.
Sounds ok to me.
Best wishes for Christmas and new
year, and much love. Do write please, by email or
post, and especially do come and visit, I
have spare rooms to overnight you. The airport is close, the railway station
closer. I am in the middle, in media res.
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