Mary Fleming's Blog, page 3

Finding the Feng Shui

Friday, 8 September

The restless, migrating spirit of the swallows that once lived here must still have been with us: no sooner had I pushed send on my last blog in July than we were once again moving furniture, reappointing rooms.  

They say you should live in a place for a year before changing anything. We did that. Then, during our three-year renovation, to skirt the works, we changed everything constantly. As such, there was ample opportunity to experience multiple configurations of our living space. But neither stasis nor perpetual motion helped us stick to the plan; we kept changing our minds about what room should serve which function. Put another way: something in our feng shui was awry.  

The first adjustment was triggered by our bed being overrun with ants in summer 2022. While waiting for them to depart...

Are they gone yet?

...we moved upstairs to what had been our first bedroom, pre-renovation…

In the beginning

It had subsequently served as our temporary kitchen-dining room (the previous owners had set it up as an Airbnb rental, so it was equipped) while the real one was being overhauled…

Fine dining experience

By the time the ants besieged us, it had been repainted and given two new windows and was the temporary main guest room.

Added value

“Hmm,” I thought after the first night. “It’s nice up here.” But I didn’t say anything. Surely David would tell me that I was crazy, that we had a beautiful master bedroom downstairs (without a kitchenette in the corner) and what was I thinking. But on day three, he said: “It’s really nice up here.”  

The decision to change bedrooms got us mulling over my office, which had ended up in the darkest room of the house and required artificial lighting even on a sunny day. I really couldn't settle there. So why not move it to our former bedroom?

Wasting energy

With the help of son William and his partner Margaux, on the hottest day of a hot summer, we reshuffled the three rooms, moved beds, chests, bookcases and my enormous Berlin desk.

I'm not feeling this one

My new office was light, with lovely views and lots of space. But I never warmed to it, always felt over-exposed and as restless as the swallows who had occupied it when it was still a barn. And because it still had a bed, I had to decamp whenever the house had an overflow of guests.

WeWork, Perche branch

On one such occasion in late June this year, it occurred to me that I'd be much happier out of the flow of things, in the actual main guest room upstairs (right next door to that first dark office!). But surely David would tell me that I was crazy, that there was no way we were going to lug that furniture up and down the stairs and all across the house yet again, that we needed the space for guests. When I did finally run the notion by him, however, he said (bless him): "Great idea."

So there we were a year later, on another hot July day, moving beds, chests, bookcases and my enormous Berlin desk, this time on our own. I don’t know how the two of us managed, but undoubtedly our previous experience helped.

And it was worth every strained muscle. Tucked away upstairs, with my desk and chaise longue against one wall...

Happy now?

...a selection of soothing paintings to look at on the other...

Ah

...I finally have the Room of My Own, the space where my mind feels both settled and free, and I cannot over-emphasise the difference this has made to my general sense of well-being.

According to Dr Wikipedia, the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui "claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment." Think what you will of it - that it's cosmic gospel or a pseudoscience that New Agey Western gurus promote to make a fortune - the concept is based on an essential truth: our physical environment affects our inner state. Even David, who runs a mile when he hears talk of 'energy forces', sensed that our 'perfect spots' had not yet been found.

I do think we've finally got it now; may the spirit of the swallows rest in peace.  

Perfect vantage point

_____________

You can visit my website here and follow me on Instagram here

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Friday, 14 July

Here in France, it’s a weekend of grand départ. In fact, it’s grander than usual this mid-July because besides the normal flow of people leaving on their summer holiday, Bastille Day makes a three-day weekend. But having just returned from 10 days away in Ireland and Northern Ireland, I'm not going anywhere.

Our travel plan was for me to meet David at the end of his Irish golf trip so that we could tour County Donegal just the two of us – the first time we’d attempted such a getaway in longer than I can remember – then head to the north coast of Northern Ireland, where we had invited various family members and friends to join us in a rented house.

So much for planning: 20 minutes before departure, my flight to Belfast was cancelled. With Easy Jet (which should be required by law to change its jaunty, deceptive name), there’s no human to help you, but I finally managed with the app to get myself rerouted via Manchester. After re-waiting every long line at Charles de Gaulle airport, I waited a lot more – the next two planes were late – meaning I didn't arrive in Belfast until near midnight, almost 15 hours after I'd left home – and had to stay at the airport hotel.

The next day I picked up the car, bigger than I’m used to driving, especially on the wrong side of the road, and on a narrow lane in the middle of nowhere, I ran over a rock...

Punctured

...causing a further delay of over two hours while I waited for a repairman, since cars no longer carry spares. The farmer lady upon whose drive I had ge-dunked brought me a tray with tea and biscuits, which helped re-inflate my spirits at least.

What I managed to see of County Donegal was lovely...

Eden, Irish style (Glenveagh Castle garden)

...but it was quickly time to move on to Downhill, Northern Ireland and the Airbnb rental, a late Victorian house just the other side of the railway tracks from a vast sandy beach and in the confines of the Binevenagh "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty", a convoluted British term for a pretty place worth preserving.

Beautiful it is. There were great views of the moody Northern Irish skies and plenty of rooms to accommodate our numbers that ebbed and flowed like the tide.

Room with a view

When you’re a biggish group with several children, you don’t need to plan many activities beyond swimming, walking on the beach...

Antony and David

...romping in the garden...

Jane jumping downhill at Downhill

...playing with the pebbles or just reading your book...

Mira and Fanny

...but one day a subgroup went on an evening ride along the beach.

Bucking modern locomotion (Alexandra, Georgina and Fanny, photo by Hazel)

And another we walked up the hill to visit what’s left of Downhill Demesne, a grand country house built by the Bishop of Derry in 1768 (and including the Mussenden Temple, perched on the eroding cliff in the above photo) that in its heyday looked like this...

(etching by John Preston Neale)

...but now, after the owners in the 1950s let the roof cave in, like this...

Victoria and Antony

Wandering its shell was reminiscent of Pompeii, without the calcified bodies.

Our last day, we visited Giant's Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage Sight of crazy basalt pillars.

Pillars of strength

Their repetitive pattern looks human made, so it's not surprising that an anthropomorphic explanation was concocted. Legend has it that the causeway was built by the Irish giant Finn MacCool (I would like to legally change my name!) in preparation for his battle with the Scottish giant Benandonner. That was of course many moons ago, but grand-daughter Mira was sure that Mr MacCool was still up there. As we walked out to the rocks, she kept casting a nervous eye up the cliff and whispering: "We have to be quiet. The giant is sleeping." Our reassurances that he wouldn't come down until all the people (and there were lots and lots of us) had left did not convince.

Let sleeping giants lie (photo by Fanny)

Beach holidays were created to remove you from the worries and problems of daily life. But the real world crept in on ours.

Northern Ireland is generally cool and wet - bliss to me after overheated, dry France. Shortly before our arrival, however, the island experienced 30 days of no rain and temperatures hovering near 30°C/85°F. This caused blue-green algae, a natural feature of fresh water, to "bloom", an oddly jolly word, given that the proliferation, which then flows into the sea, is toxic. It was first noticed because dogs were dying around Lough Neagh.

According to The Rivers Trust, the algae was fed by excesses of nitrogen and phosphorous, deriving from "human activities such as agricultural runoff, sewage discharges, and the use of fertilisers." Beaches to the east and west of us were closed, but we swam at Downhill until the last day, when the red flags went up there too, a sign it was time to go home (but not without more delays!).

Now here we are at Deux Champs, settling back into the peace and quiet of our own Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Staying put

Wishing you all a happy summer. Rendez-vous in September.

_____________

You can visit my website here and follow me on Instagram here

Safe Haven II (Maybe)

Friday, 30 June

No sooner had my friend Trevor, who was staying chez nous in Paris last week with his husband Dana, said: “It’s not crowded,” than I was on my bike and pedalling across the Seine to the recently renovated Hôtel de la Marine on the place de la Concorde.

I’d spent the morning up in my office trying to concentrate despite the hooting car horns and whining sirens disturbing the peace through the open window and the previous afternoon battling the noisy, nervy, hot city at ground level on two wheels.

As many of you know, my gripes about the state of Paris are not new. A while ago, I tried to improve my attitude with positive thinking: the works will not go on forever and comparatively, Paris still rates high on the beauty scale; at least I'm not living under Baron Haussmann when half the city was razed, nor are there bombs raining down on us, as they are in Ukraine. When that reasoning didn't work, I tried to look at it through the eyes of our recent visitors. From Trevor and Dana, to my sister- and brother-in-law Julia and Larry, to our Italian friends Lucio and Donatella (Venice and Rome!), all praised the city's magnificence.

But this week no amount of mental gymnastics was doing the trick. This video, Paris saccagé, by singer-songwriter Pierre Perret best expresses why. You don't need to understand the words to get the picture.

Paris lady, toi qui fut le paradis

Take away the heaps of rubbish (it was filmed during the collectors' strike in March-April) and maybe some of the rats but add the hordes of tourists who have returned the past weeks and this is what it was like on my Wednesday bike tour.  

I hoped that if the museum was uncrowded, it might also be quiet. Maybe even cool. Another safe haven, like the Fondation Custodia I took refuge in last October.

Garden view (right edifice)

Construction of the building and its twin on the north side of the place de la Concorde, then place Louis XV, was finished in 1767. Originally called the Hôtel du Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, it managed the monarchy’s decorative art and furniture. Interestingly, the valuable pieces were not considered property of the King but of France herself and whatever was in storage at the time could be visited by the public for a few hours once a month.

Sadly for the monarchy, that cracked-open door policy was not enough to pacify the people. Munitions were also stocked there, and on the eve of the Revolution, angry citizens raided the building and stole various arms, including the cannons that fired the first shots at the Bastille the next day.  

After the Revolution, the hôtel became the Ministry of the Navy and remained so until 2015 when the sailors moved to the periphery of Paris. A vast renovation ensued to restore the rooms to their royal glory. I’d been meaning to visit since it opened to the public (every day!) in the middle of Covid.

Cool and quiet

No sooner through the passage cocher and into the courtyard than the frenzied outside world fell away.  

The way up

A swooping staircase, led me to the apartments of the successive intendants, Pierre-Élisabeth de Fontanieu and Marc-Antoine Thierry de Ville-d'Avray.  

Office life, circa 1785

Closed wooden shutters and soft lighting drew me into the time-warped cocoon, while state-of-the-art headphones provided an aurally virtual ancien régime ambiance, complete with the sound of footsteps on the parquet and clinking glasses.

Cheers

In some of the rooms where the shutters were open, the gold and glass dazzled.

A balcony provided a lofty view well above the fray...

...of the busy city below.

The gilded, ornate beauty of the kings Louis XIV - XVI may not be to my taste, but I admired the craftsmanship and sense of style. The décor appears to reflect a flourishing, robust society, one in which the people furnishing the rooms believed in their future.  

Yet the Hôtel du Garde-Meuble de la Couronne only had two administrators, the second taking over from the first and lavishly decorating his living quarters in 1785, a mere four before the Revolution upended the country.

The way down

Tuesday, the day before I visited the sumptuous Hôtel de la Marine, a police officer shot and killed Nahel, a 17-year old boy of Algerian descent fleeing a control for a traffic violation on the outskirts of Paris. As I write from my aerie office in the VII arrondissement - where it's now quiet - the suburbs and cities around France are on fire in protest.

Havens may not be as safe as they seem.

_____________

You can visit my website here and follow me on Instagram here

Why We're Here

Friday, 16 June

It’s been a while since David has said: “I know we bought this house for that damn dog.”

He is of course talking about Deux Champs, the property we purchased four years ago in the Perche, and our rescue dog Tasha (aka la Princesse).

I can think of three possible reasons for the pause in my husband's refrain:

1. He’s got other things on his mind
2. He sees better now what’s in it for him
3. Acceptance (sigh)  

There’s certainly been a lot of distraction (Option 1). Over the last three months, with many visits from family and friends, we've hardly seen the time pass. The dog gets lost in the shuffle, except when demanding attention, which is often, and guests have kindly helped pick up the slack.

Loving hand

When not busy with people, we've been much focused on the out of doors. It's been an odd spring. For three weeks in May a northeast wind blew non-stop and so bitterly, that I dressed covered up like a past-it, reclusive celebrity for the morning walk. Here we are on the 31st:

Move over - I'm the star here

At least the cold nights kept the flowers refrigerated and thus vigorous and vivid...

...during the day...

Wild flower child

Thankfully, because they certainly weren't getting any rain to keep them alive, even when the wind finally changed direction, and summer (before it's even summer!) landed on us like molten lead.

Heat

But work on Claire's Mediterranean, drought-resistant garden has continued apace. Despite temperature and aridity...

With a little help from my friends

...nature has managed...

Fighters

The flourishing garden, along with the house itself, which now feels like a refuge rather than a train station of revolving workers....

Hush

...make it a cinch to see what's in it for us (Option 2). If I thought Deux Champs was a dream come true when we bought it, I was speaking too soon. David, though he might wax less rhapsodically, would agree that paradise has been upgraded.

As for Option 3, Acceptance (sigh), maybe it doesn't really matter what David thinks, because Tasha remains convinced that Deux Champs and lands well beyond its boundaries constitute her kingdom. Extended hunting excursions may be less frequent than in our early days here but, lest we slip into complacency, one day in May, she was gone for five (5) hours. The scenarios that ran through my mind of what might have happened to her were not pretty. When she did finally return, I was so relieved, I didn't notice until evening that she'd gashed herself on barbed wire or a bramble (again!), meaning that by the time I got her to the vet, it was too late to stitch and bandage, resulting in this:

Not my idea of a crown

Fortunately, my sister told me about a travel-style neck cushion that would also stop her licking the wound, and Tasha's mood improved.

Ready to board

So what's the reason David has stopped speculating on why we're here? Multiple choice formats often have a final option, and that, I think, best answers the question:

4. All of the above

_____________

You can visit my website here and follow me on my Instagram here

Food for Thought

Friday, 26 May

Let me ask you a question: is it odd that a blogger who lives in France never blogs about food?

I think so, especially given how much the writer in question, me, loves food and all things culinary.

Okay, there was once an entry about Indian cuisine, another where a fondness for cherries and berries was mentioned, but never a piece on the primordial place of the meal in my life and the country’s psyche.

Fit for a king (kitchen at la Conciergerie)

This omission struck me the other day when I went to the exhibition Paris, Capital of Gastronomy, from the Middle Ages to Today at the Conciergerie. The word gastronomie itself was taken from the Greek, "the art of regulating the stomach" but was brought into the daily lexicon by Jean-Anthelm Brillat-Savarin in his 1825 Physiologie du goût, and please note the origin of much of the culinary vocabulary that follows.

The exhibition begins with an account of a banquet organised in situ in 1378 by King Charles V. The meal for 800 is presented in such enthusiastic and expansive detail, it could have been served yesterday.

No one left hungry

Another section describes Les Halles, the enormous central market built in the 12th century, that Emile Zola called the Stomach of Paris (and which was displaced to Rungis, outside Paris, to make way for a train station and a hideous shopping mall circa 1970). Another outlines the invention of the restaurant in the 18th century (the word derives from the French verb restaurer, to restore), another praises the art of bread and pastry making, noting that last year UNESCO anointed the baguette with “intangible cultural heritage status” (I guess that's meant as a compliment).

"Et moi alors ?" cried the croissant

Like many Americans my age, I grew up in a gastronomically challenged environment.

Land of the free

My mother - while not resorting to the above - cooked Oscar Meyer hot dogs and dry pork chops with icky Mott's apple sauce and frozen green beans for my sister and me, except on Sunday evening when we ate steak and baked potatoes as a family. And I was lucky. Occasionally, an avocado or an artichoke, the odd slice of real Italian salami, made its way to my plate.

But until I moved to Paris age 24, I had never licked the juice of a fresh peach from my fingers, never suspected that a head of garlic could be so sensual.

Rated R

Nor had I seriously cooked a meal. I remember an attempt at a mushroom and hazelnut quiche that came out very watery, some cauliflower in a stodgy cheese-ish sauce, but food was experienced monolithically.

This vegetable will be treated with greater respect

Here in France the connection to food is visceral. Transmission occurs through le terroir, a geographical area that combines crop choice and a particular environment to create a distinctive product and taste (I hope this makes sense - it's a hard concept to translate). Goods are bought at markets, where the ambiance is animated, infused with joie de vivre.

Love's got everything to do with it

Then there's les arts de la table, art being the key word. It's a mise en scène, where everything from the choice of food and wine to its aesthetic presentation to the way the table is set to the conviviality of those convoked comes into play.

Happiness

Over the years, gastronomie has got into my bones, my bloodstream, and I too can enthuse almost to the point of febrility about how adding olives to the roasted cauliflower brings the plodding vegetable alive or how sautéed rosemary and hazelnuts perk up those seasonal, fresh green beans.  

Natural beauty

This isn't to say that everyone in France loves food and cooking or that you can’t get a bad meal here. Too many fruits and vegetables are now grown in Spain. There are more and more plats préparés with chemically added ingredients for people in a hurry, and many of the cafés around us in Paris are mediocre at best. Just last month I dragged David to a restaurant in the Perche that I didn’t want to snub because it's modest. Though they made an effort, served the food with ceremony, digesting all that oil was hard work.  

I tried

In fact, during the 90s and early 00s, the quality level of French restaurants took a serious dip into complacency. But between global competition and the food-obsessed millennials coming of age, a whole new energy has been injected into French cuisine with lots of insistence on local, organic products and a return to le terroir. In Paris the last few years there has been the revival of 19th century bouillons, cheap restaurants with good French fare; it really shouldn't be about the money.

Chartier reincarnated (photo by Michel Wal)

The exhibition at the Conciergerie made me wonder how my relationship to gastronomie, would have been different had I not moved to France as a young thing. I can't imagine not relishing meal-time, but what I might have missed is a sobering thought.

Cheers

_____________

You can visit my website here and follow me on my Instagram here

Finishing Touches

Friday, 12 May

“Is it finished?” ask some (genuinely wondering).
“It’s finished, right?” ask others (as in: after all this time, it’s gotta be…).
“It’s finished,” state still others (no inflection, since there’s no way it couldn’t be done by now).  

My answers, depending on my mood and how much detail I feel like providing, have been equally modulated:

“Almost,” (the truth but begging further questions).
"Ye-es…” (hopeful but dodgy).
“Yes,” (a lie).

I am referring to Q&As about the state of our mega-renovation project in the Perche, the project I have been writing about since April 2020 and that I declared “officially done” in April 2022, when we signed off with the architects and artisans. Emphasis on the officially.  

In fact, several parts of the plan to restore a 16th century seigneurie and re-unite house, garden and surrounding fields continued to languish. Next to the kitchen, there was the débotté, the boot room for coats, dirty footwear and dog towels. Outside there was the garden, at first delayed by missing terrace stones, then by the arid heat of summer, then by the cloddy mud of winter. Finally, there was the parking area, where the old letter box, held together by wire, teetered precariously and sometimes seemed a symbol for all our restoration limbo.

Help

About six weeks ago, we consulted the architects Monsieur et Madame Jaussaud, then announced that regardless of the state of things, we would be hosting une fête de fin de chantier, a party to celebrate the real end of the works, on May 10th. The various enterprises – from the masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers and electricians to the roofers, terrassiers and the pool people (et j’en passe) – should let us know how many would attend.

Apparently, there’s nothing like the prospect of having your fellow artisans observe your unfinished work to spur you into action.

"I tell you: the day of judgment is coming"

In a final burst of activity that briefly rivalled the human hive of a couple years ago, we had the masons, plumbers, carpenters and painters for the boot room.

Outside, Claire and her team, with us pitching in when we could, went into a frenzy of planting plants, pulling weeds and laying wood chips.

Claire also oversaw the building of the parking area that she had designed. In came more masons and the terrassiers.

Directing future traffic

It was here, in the future car park, where a full circle began to take shape. Two members of the original masonry team who had converted the barn into living space and had broken through the 500-year old wall to connect it to the house were back on the job: Christophe...

Victory indeed (photo by Claire)

...and Brandon, a cute, shy 15-year old apprentice at the beginning of our project and now a confident, handsome 18-year old who wants to be an architect...

Brando-esque

The terrassiers, who had already moved much earth to make our heaven, re-appeared.

Monsieur C getting down to work with Christophe (photo by Claire)

And it all got done. The débotté, the parking area and the stone support for the new letter box.

Ready to receive

The garden, after buckets of rain, was lush and inviting.

I'm so pretty (photo by Claire)

Phew, since we were expecting 52 people at our party. Even the Imperturbable One (aka David) was nervous. All those guests and, en plus, it was supposed to rain. But our biggest concern, really, was giving people a good time, letting the artisans know how grateful we are for their talent and hard work over the last three years.  

It did rain, and we all squeezed into the house. David and I were too busy greeting new arrivals and filling glasses to accurately gauge guest satisfaction, but everyone ate and drank well; the noise level never flagged.

Near the end, when the rain stopped and those who were left moved outside, there were further signs of a good vibe...

Bonhomie

...among the smiling sub-group...

No need to say Cheese?

In a poignant finale, the last to leave were the first to have contributed to the transformation of Deux Champs: the architects Monsieur et Madame Jaussaud and the masons Christophe, Brandon and Antoine.  

Parting shot

The photo brings bittersweet tears to my eyes. Of course we are happy to regain the tranquility that drew us to this house at the end of the lane in the first place. But we will miss the people who have been a big part of our life here these last three years, the team who worked so hard and so well to create our new home.

Un grand merci to one and all.

_____________

You can visit my website here and follow me on my Instagram here

Ode to April

Friday, 21 April

“April is the cruellest month.”

What an overused way to start a piece of writing concerning the fourth month of the year. Worse, it is often misused, thus spoiling all the irony that TS Eliot infused into the first line of his 1922 poem The Waste Land.

With every misreading, I itch to set the record straight: the poet calls April cruel not because of some ugly twist of fate or, more mundanely, because the weather has been terrible, but because “Winter kept us warm, covering/Earth in forgetful snow.” It's the spring rain stirring us from our hibernal torpor that is brutal, the lilacs growing out of the dead land that is torture. Rebirth is painful.

Eye-opening

What an exquisitely fresh perspective, I thought, when I first read the poem at 19. Especially since subliminally I already knew what the poet meant. Even Monday mornings could nudge my dulled weekend roots uncomfortably, and some years spring did indeed seem a rude awakening.

But not this April, Mr Eliot. The rebirth of the world around me has been as glorious and inspiring as the photos above and below I hope convey.

After a wet March, it has kept raining. Nights and mornings have been cold but not frosty, meaning there is hope our plum, pear and quince trees will bear fruit this year.

The sun has shone too, casting a gentle dawn light over the fields of harvested winter wheat...

A pastel moment

...and yielding shockingly blue skies at dusk.

The heavens over Bellême

April this year has in fact outdone herself. Thanks to climate change, nature's spring treats have been compacted. The summer wheat, for example, is already a thick, earnest green that quivers nervously or ripples like silk, depending on the level of wind.

Whispering wheat

The colza that once upon a time flowered in late May is in full bloom. Its luminous yellow and balmy scent embody that mix of memory and desire TSE associates with the cruellest month. Even knowing that the neighbouring farmer has packed the crop with chemicals, who could not but be gay in such a jocund company (to pinch words from another poet about another yellow flower)?  

A host of golden rapeseed

This year's ebullience is also due to the improved state of our own garden. Last April it was an arid expanse of concrete and gravel, the levelled landscape broken by the odd pile of sand and rubble, an overturned wheelbarrow (stony rubbish, per TSE).

Last summer new contours were shaped and some plants planted. Then the weeds took over, but since February, Claire and Company - with some intermittent help from David and me - have been very busy...

Running the show

...weeding, trimming and providing more vegetal housing.

Nature too has been busy. What was planted last year is bursting back to life.

Hi, I'm back!

For protection, wood chips have been scattered (and rescattered) to help the plants until they can join leaves against the weeds, giving what today looks like this:

Rise up and unite, little plants!

Later in the poem Eliot talks of the dry grass singing; the dry stone and no sound of rain; dry sterile thunder without rain. The Waste Land is after all a post-World War I poem of desolation. Yet eerily, much of the scary scenario he intoned a hundred years ago is easy enough to imagine in the here and now, should we have yet another drought-stricken summer.

Contemplating the future

But for the moment, cruel April is pure joy.

_____________

You can visit my website here and follow me on my Instagram here

The Demos and the Kratos

Friday, 7 April

“What is a simple definition of democracy?

“The word democracy comes from the Greek words ‘demos’, meaning people, and ‘kratos’ meaning power; so democracy can be thought of as ‘power of the people’: a way of governing which depends on the will of the people.”

Thus spoke Google.

But it’s more complicated than that. Striking the balance between people and power, as we have witnessed on two occasions this past month in France, is not always a straightforward exercise.

The French are striking tout court. Inflamed by President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, they have now stopped work and demonstrated 11 times since the reform was introduced in January.  

We the people

Generally, these manifestations begin as festive affairs. At the departure point, there are stands selling food and drink. Different union chapters set off - yesterday right underneath our window...

Close to home

...and walk along next to a float from which music blares or a human voice booms. It may sound slightly more menacing than an Easter Day Parade but not much.

Dance with me

Underneath a buoyant surface, however, lurks genuine discontent...

National Assembly

...a feeling that the elites are always taking advantage of the working stiffs, despite the fact that France has one of the most generous state systems in the world. It is a current that has run through French society since before the king lost his head.

Please, call me Jupiter

The violence that flashed across screens around the world on March 23rd (and elicited several concerned emails from friends) occurred at the end of the march and was not incited by the demonstrators but by les black blocs, the anti-capitalists/anarchists/agitators who dress top to toe in black and set kiosks on fire, break windows and generally cause as much destruction as possible. Many banks around the city are now boarded up.

No cash here

Even if you accept the principle, like most other Europeans do, that we are living longer and therefore need to work and pay into the system longer, you can object to the way the reform has been carried out. When the law did not pass by vote in the National Assembly, the government last month ramrodded it through via a controversial article in the constitution, le 49.3. This vehicle has been used many times before but never for a bill of this import and one which 75% of the population are known to oppose. People feel tricked by Power.

Hall of Mirrors 

Macron and his prime minister Elisabeth Borne are not the only politicians resorting to political sleights of hand. Last Sunday the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo held a referendum on the future of rental e-scooters. Touted as the latest and greatest ecological mode of urban transport when they first appeared almost five years ago, trottinettes quickly divided the public. On the one hand, with 450,000 rentals a day, the system has proved more popular here, and by a large margin, than in other European cities.

Come and get us

On the other, they (or their riders) have not endeared themselves to pedestrians. Until they were given parking places, they littered thoroughfares everywhere.

Casting a long shadow

User incivility and accidents (three people killed and 459 injured in 2022) have deepened dislike. And with a life expectancy of 28 days to six months, depending on the study, their ecological credentials are questionable at best.

Clean energy?

Madame Hildalgo, itching to rid of the city of these troublesome brats, called the citizens to vote on April 2nd, and the result was a resounding 89% Non. The mayor praised it as "a beautiful triumph for democracy in our city."

Fair riddance?

Really? Only 103,084 people, a weeny 8% of the population, actually cast a ballot. Madame Hidalgo, wagering that the grumblers were more likely to express their opinion than the trottinette-istes, may have made a more savvy political calculation than, say, UK Prime Minister David Cameron did in 2016 on Brexit, but does such a sliver of the voting folk constitute "the power of the people"?

E-scooters soon to be retired

President Macron is said to be haunted by a fear that the extreme right-wing Marine Le Pen will succeed him in office. By disillusioning the demos with the political machinations of the kratos, he may be ensuring just that.

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Of Puddles and Ponds

Friday, 24 March

My family often accuses me of being a glass half-empty kind of person. Someone who imagines the worst-case scenario at every turn. While I admit that my mind can tend to misadventure, I would argue that in many instances, I am just being a realist, particularly when it comes to the stuff actually in the glass, water.  

The Perche is known as a wet place. It has a reputation for lots of rain, and the region is veined with streams and small rivers, dotted with ponds. Geologically, it forms the watershed for the Seine and the Loire Rivers and is the source to others, such as the Eure (on which we used to have a house).

Off kilter

But like much of the rest of the planet, today it is climately challenged. In the four years we’ve lived here, there have been Aprils without a single shower, leading to some pretty sad May flowers and drought-stricken summers. This year the dry season began even earlier: between mid-January and early March not a single drop fell on much of France. Water tables were alarmingly low. While Météo France was already talking about sécheresse, most people complained about the weather not because of the lack of rain but because skies were grey.  

Lifeline

Earlier postings may have led you to believe that during morning walks with Tasha, my eyes are riveted on the sky and my tree friends. But I am just as attentive to the ground under my feet and whether the grass is going swish-swash or crickle-crackle, whether the earth is soft and muddy or rock hard and fissured. On my walks from late autumn to spring, I obsessively check certain dips in the terrain to gauge their level of water, and this winter I watched them deplete with a heavy heart.

Perishing puddle

Fortunately, while we were in Berlin, the sky did its March thing and rained. We returned to this...

...which produced this in one of my puddle meters...

These last two weeks, it has continued to rain enough to keep those puddles full and happy and even sometimes - like this very morning - to produce offspring.

Fledging member of the community

By extension, I also keep a close eye on our ponds. There's the one right next to the lane whose life was saved when Claire and Estéban got it dredged and horror-film quantities of 40-year old cow dung came flowing forth.

Killer poo

Estéban tracks the pond's progress regularly and confirms it is now thriving with plants, insects and newts.

Hello, little eft

Given that I walk by every morning, it is a point of reference for me, one that I photograph in its different moods...

...Ode to Melancholy......Ode to Joy

Under Estéban’s guidance, we also created two new ponds at the top of the property, along the edge of the woods. With the clay soil around here, a little tamping by the digger made them leak-free.

Here to stay

Life is taking hold in them too, and furthermore none of the three has gone dry even during droughts, meaning we're not only boosting the ecosystem but also giving animals a place to drink throughout the year. And later this spring - who knows - maybe some swallows will even dip in and use the surrounding mud to build new nests.

Free building material

So while others bemoan our almost daily showers, I rejoice.

My glass is full to the brim.

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Guest Apparence

Friday, 10 March

Last week I dreamt I went to Berlin again...

Actually, unlike the narrator of Rebecca who made a nocturnal visit to her former home Manderley, I did physically return to the city where I once lived. It just felt like a dream.

For more recent readers, some background: from 2013 until mid-2019, my husband David and I split our life between Paris and Berlin. It was during those years that this photo-essay, originally entitled A Paris-Berlin Diary, was conceived.

Fractured images

I hadn’t been back to Berlin in over three years, and right from the minute I stepped off the train at the Hauptbahnof my head was in a swirl, a dazed state between past and present, memory and reality. Even the city’s geography spun around uncertainly in my head.

Which track am I on?

We stayed at a friend's in Mitte, not far from the first flat we rented, and it was a perfect spot from which to reset my bearings, visit old haunts, itemise what has and hasn’t changed in the last four years.

Certainly the building frenzy I chronicled on multiple occasions back then (for comparative photos, click on the links as indicated) has only intensified.

Bricks for breakfast

Our old Kiez of Alt-Treptow, for example, is in full construction mode. The project for two towers, on a site that was once grassland and prime dog-walking territory, had already begun in the months before we left. I don't know what's taking them so long; they're still only on the foundations.

Former grounds for frolicking

Work on the extension of the Autobahn that will pass a mere 100 metres/yards from our old house continues.

But I wasn't expecting that the Real (pronounced Ré-al) hyper-market, to which I bizarrely beelined upon each return to the city, would be closed, as are most of the other shops in the shopping centre. I ate my sandwich on a bench and watched the remaining spirits wander by. The colossus is, I imagine, destined for destruction - no aesthetic loss for the city, just a mnemonic one for me and surely many east Berliners for whom it was a cornerstone.  

Lost soul

Meanwhile, across the river, on the Straulau peninsula, every available centimetre has been built into identikit housing and office space, with only one lone hold out (an internet search did not reveal what antibodies allow this old codger to continue fighting off the development virus).

I will survive!

One day I took the S-Bahn to Plänterwald, so I could run in the woods where I spent many hours with the dogs. I visited some old friends...

Hi there

...and checked on the 'renovation' of the abandoned Spreewald amusement park that used to loom out of the trees like a hallucination. The old rides (that wheel!) and attractions have now been almost entirely removed...

You're next

In some ways, however, Berlin hasn't changed at all, seems in fact to grip tenaciously to its old self. A surprising number of our regular restaurants, for example, from the early days on the Almstadtstraße have survived unchanged.

Lebensmittel forever

The U- and S-Bahn stations remain firmly of their time, and as a user without a pass, you are still only able to buy paper tickets in batches of four, tickets that are laboriously spit out of a clunky old machine and validated in another.

Modly dressed

There continue to be many (I'd say more) down and out people...

Playing real good for free

And since Berlin is too big for developers to rebuild simultaneously everywhere, there are plenty of areas that feel frozen in time.

'When Will It Finally Be Again as It Never Was' (West Berlin)

The last day I took a tram to the end of the Hohenschönhausen line, where Plattenbauen, the massive post-War blocks built in the former GDR, still dominate the landscape.

It's not beautiful, but I found it reassuring, being amongst buildings and people who have been Berliner for sixty plus years, have weathered many of the city's changes from the same spot. Beyond the trendy centre where English has become the municipal language, east Berlin is still East Berlin.

Castles in the sky

When we moved here in 2013, even if the push and pull between the past and future was already apparent, the city felt more rooted in the war and division of its tortured 20th century. Today, the shift into the 21st has picked up speed, but the city, with all its incongruities and quirks, still induces a dazed and dreamy state, even at the end of a week's visit.  

Perhaps that is what makes Berlin Berlin.

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