ADIEU LA FRANCE, HOLA ESPANA

I have been an unrepentant  Francophile for many years, almost since the day, aged 7 or so, that I discovered old uncle Algernon's dusty pre-war Hugo's French Primer in the bookcase at home and started teaching myself phrases such as "Pardi! Otez votre haute-forme, Monsieur, avant de descendre de la calèche" *   By my teens I was nuts about all things French - Sacha Distel particularly.  At 15 I won two tickets to his concert at the London Palladium in a Daily Mirror competition, where a terrified Sacha was mauled by me and Aunt Lucy, and 48 other middle-aged women.

I am in here somewhere

I visited France at every opportunity until the age of 23, when I set off to seek my fortune as a danseuse exotique at the Folies Bergère.  I had no idea how long I would stay, but it turned out to be the equivalent of two seven-year itches.  However, in recent years I have become increasingly disillusioned with the Hexagon.  For the past eight years I have been on a catch-up exercise visiting all the bits of France I didn't have time to see when I lived in Paris.  I have been to Brittany North, Brittany South, La Rochelle, the Vaucluse, Corsica, the Loire Valley, Cathar country, Alsace AND Lorraine, Champagne country, the Nord-Pas de Calais and of course countless visits to Paris.  I have been searching for that corner of France that beckoned winsomely, the place where I could hang my béret, take off my Christian Louboutins and pour myself a glass of Chablis.    Unfortunately, eight years later, I find French towns looking more like Slough than Shangri-La.   Sometimes you wonder if there's not a case to be made to Angela Merkel to send the Luftwaffe back on an architectural mercy mission.

 

Cergy-Pontoise

In addition, I am coming to the conclusion that France isn't all it used to be.  I notice a growing trend for Starbucks and Claire's Accessories.  The food isn't so good any more.  It is generally accepted everywhere - everywhere except France, that is - that you'll eat better in London than in Paris these days.    The French have lost that je ne sais quoi.  400,000 of them have buggered off to London.  Most café-tabacs in Paris are run by the Chinese.  And there are roundabouts everywhere.  You might as well be in Milton Keynes. And now it looks as though the dreadful Le Pen woman and her odious cohorts may be running the place before long.   The last bastion of the Fronde is about to fall.  I am throwing in the torchon.   It's time to find a new hunting ground. 

                                 The old Spanish mission ... no bullet holes in this one

Gorbals and I made an expeditionary trip to Andalusia last November.  It's no country for old women down there - it's where Sergio Leone filmed his "Dollars" series of spaghetti westerns, and every petrol pump attendant looks like the illegitimate son of Lee Van Cleef.  Added to that, we were staying 600m up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and it was freezing cold.

I had been to Spain seven times before, since 1986, and therefore am not a total virgen in matters Iberian.  I had picked up a little Spanish on my travels.  I am a great fan of Spanish food, although I do wish they would eat at a reasonable hour.    The Spanish breakfast comes a very close second to the Full English in my book.  You can keep your cappuccino, a Spanish cafe con leche accompanied by freshly squeezed orange juice is the best way to start the day.


Many years ago I had a plan to visit the three great Moorish cities of Andalusia. On previous visits I had been to the Alcazar in Seville and the Mezquita in Cordoba.   I finally completed my triathlon in November, with the breathtaking Alhambra in Granada. 

I stood on one of the verandahs of the Generalife and gazed out over the palaces, transported back to a previous life as the Sultan's flame-haired favourite, floating about in fuchsia chiffon harem pants bearing silver platters of Fry's Turkish Delight, or occasionally treating him to my old routine from the Folies Bergere.

"Come to me, my little loukoum" he called, looking a bit like Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia.  "You must show me that thing you do again with the ping pong balls."  I fluttered my eyelashes over my yashmak and shook my head demurely.  "Sire, you are confusing me with that bint from Bangkok," I protested.  "I only do it with Maltesers."    Only I could get away with contradicting the mighty Sheikh Ahmed Bin Liner, anyone else would have been beheaded for such lèse-majesté.  But he could refuse me nothing.  My lustrous curly locks - the colour of tangerines, he wrote in his poetry - and my alabaster skin fascinated him.   He called me Rebekah, which in his dialect means "She who listens in the shadows".   I sat at his feet in rapt attention while he recited his love poetry.  Unfortunately his voice was so mellifluous that I fell asleep, and when I awoke I had missed the guided tour of the palaces and nearly missed the charabanc back to our hotel.

Of course there is the problem of the 1 million Brits already in Spain, and it would seem that no corner of Iberia is untouched by British hand.  Still, I'm not as purist as I used to be about being an emigrant.  I would of course learn Spanish should I decide to live there, but I would not turn my nose up at having a British supermarket within walking distance, Tetley's tea bags and tapas are not mutually exclusive.


And then there's the music.  I am, as you know, a great fan of flamenco.  I have seen Manitas de Plata in concert twice - and actually met him once - as well as Antonio Gades' dance troupe and Paco de Lucia in concert, not to mention a good few tablaos in Madrid and Seville, and almost became engaged to an accidental member of the Gipsy Kings once in the South of France.  The flamenco is a dance which is designed for a woman of my calibre, shoe size and temperament.  Stamping my feet is something which comes very easy to me.

An early addition to my musical education

 The formidable and elastic-stocking-defying Blanca del Rey, about whose 
live performance I reported in 2011

On the whole, there's a lot about Spain I like.  I shall be taking my investigations further in future years, and to France I say "zut alors".   Spain has much to recommend it.  I am sure you will agree, ladies.

*  I say!  Remove your top hat, Sir, before getting down from the carriage.

REBOOT

Let's blog again, like we did last summer ...or rather last decade.  Last night one was reminded of the halcyon days of blogging by erstwhile Prince of Darkness Spanish Goth, into whom one bumped on the steps of the Hairy Canary en route to a New Year's libation with Aunty Marianne and Scouse Doris.  Having just seen the aforementioned blogueuses, he feigned surprise at seeing one in this unaccustomed part of town and asked "What is this, a bloggers revivalist meeting?"

Blogging, it appears, has gone the way of the skipping rope, the hula hoop,  Babycham, "Charlie" (the perfume, not the other stuff), the Gonk, the reel-to-reel tape recorder, the IBM Golfball, tank tops, loon pants, Radio 1 DJs, youth clubs, the Rubik's cube, the Furby, Jimmy Savile, western TV series, Athena posters,  ......... which is, I think, a shame as it had many beneficial effects, especially for people on the autism spectrum. 

As a way of making friends, blogging was the electronic equivalent of kidnapping. Speed-dating for control freaks.  If Facebook is like being in the pub, blogging was like standing on the bar with everyone else gagged and bound.  You could hold forth at length, and readers had to absorb the entire post before commenting.  That way, you were sure to be heard, if not listened to.  It was great for ranters, although not wise for them to add "Site Meter" to their blogs, as they soon realized they were standing on the bar of an empty pub, or like John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness.

There were some big egos.  There were even some "method bloggers" who refused to come out of character.  And they, of course, assumed everyone else was a method blogger too.  I remember one Grande Dame of the ethernet, having met me in the flesh, saying in a bemused way:  
"You're not at all how I imagined.  I thought you'd be .... "   
"Posher?"  I countered, shifting my chip from one shoulder to the other.   
 "Yurse .... " she replied languidly, blowing Sobranie smoke through an ivory holder. * 



Some bloggers even got famous and were published.  Belle de Nuit was one, and Petite Anglaise, who it turned out was just bored between husbands and is now back in an office job. 

 

I even got into print myself.  I and a few other Brussels bloggers were featured in this compilation which was published for Red Nose Day 2007.  

 

Blogging was a way of allowing people who are convinced there's a book in them to find out it's only a pamphlet, write it and get on with their lives.  But you get a bit of feedback and the let-down is gentle because the expectations are that much lower.  As for me, I contented myself with a therapeutic voiding once a week, only some of which was based on fact.  But then life got in the way and, you know, the creative juices started to leak out of the tetrapak that is my mind.


Remakes. reboots and reprises are very in vogue right now.  Ben Stiller has remade  "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (which will remind me of Harold, I know);  Ridley Scott is remaking "Exodus" in the Almeria desert, where Christian Bale as Moses (nice irony there!) will part the Sea of Plastic and Jesse from Breaking Bad will play Joshua 'blowing' his horn - all terribly subtle;  "Open All Hours" is coming back, with an elderly David Jason now in the role that Ronnie Barker vacated.   


So my New Year's resolution is to decant my mind into a bottle rather than the other way round, and write more tales of the KNOB**, further adventures of Gorbals McChe (Glasgow Hard Man - retired),  The Rise and Rise of Bert,  Hot Flash and brassy women of a certain age, the best way to play the maracas, salacious gossip about the Euroslebs of Brussels, and possibly even The Return of Scrumpy.

The KNOB**

 Eurosleb.  Sorry, Euroslob.

 Gorbals

The famous reboot of Dr Who was a lifesaver for the Doctor.  Perhaps it's time for Daphne to regenerate?   In a post-ironic way, naturally.







*Any resemblance to bloggers living or dead is purely coincidental 
** Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band

THEY MADE ME DEAF, YOU KNOW (PART DEUX)

Milady Esmeralda de Wayne de la Bough ended her performance with a flourish.  The crowd went wild.  Quasi McModo hirpled round with the hat, collecting a total of two sous, a button and an out of date luncheon voucher.   He infiltrated the crowd while Milady did her extended thank-you speech and dipped a few unsuspecting pockets.   His second haul wasn't much better.  He was just extracting a wallet from a back pocket when a firm hand appeared from nowhere and gripped his wrist.

"Put that back,"  came a gruff voice.  Quasi looked up with his best 'it wasnae me' face.  Two flinty blue eyes glared down at him.

"Please, sir .... "  he whined.

"Please sir nothing."  the stranger growled back.  "What is your name, boy?"

"Er .... Oliver Twist, sir."

"LIAR!" bellowed the man. "You are Baldrick McModo, known as Quasi!  Don't you remember me?"

Quasi squinted up at him.  "Er ...  dad?"  he ventured.  It was worth a try.

"Sacrebleu, please God my loins should never sire a whelp like this!"  spluttered the stranger.  "Think back, McModo.  You have seen my face before, I'll wager."

Quasi squinted harder, although as he only had one eye, he couldn't squint too much or he wouldn't see anything.

"Come tae think of it, ye dae look familiar .... "

The man started to move away, still gripping Quasi's wrist.

"Where are we going, sir?"  whined Quasi.

"Here on the steps of the Cathedral, a beggar woman found you and saved  your life.  She took you to the orphanage where you grew up.  I was the director of that orphanage.  My portrait was at the top of the stairs.  I am your benefactor.  I have watched you from afar."

He paused, for dramatic effect,

"My name is Jean Valjean Magwitch".  .

"JEAN VALJEAN MAGWITCH!"  repeated Quasi, for dramatic effect.  "Why, you're the man whose portrait was at the top of the stairs in the orphanage!"

"Indeed I am, child."  said the stranger, looking more like Kenneth Branagh by the minute.  "I hoped that you would educate yourself and pull yourself out of the gutter.  But I see my efforts were in vain."

He glanced towards the Parvis de Notre Dame, where Milady was taking a final bow.

"Who is that woman?"  he asked, with a furrowed brow.

"Och, that's Lady Esmeralda.  I work for her." replied Quasi.

"Take me to her!" commanded Valjean Magwitch.  "This woman must have a heart of gold.  And her legs aren't bad either."

Milady saw Quasi approaching, dangling from the clenched fist of the well dressed stranger.  She adjusted her decollete, and flashed a radiant smile.

"And who have we here?"  she cried, rattling her tambourine.  "Good morrow, milord. Have you come to take down my particulars?"

Valjean Magwitch met her eyes unblinkingly.   "Madame," he began, taking her hand and brushing it with his lips.

Milady curtseyed prettily.  "Charmed, I'm sure," she responded.  "Have we had the pleasure, Squire?"

"No, and we've not met before either," responded Valjean Magwitch. "But I know who you are, Milady."

Esmeralda raised an eyebrow. "Do you now?"

"You are Gladys Eliza Doolittle Perkins of Wapping!"  he boomed.   Milady turned pale and faltered slightly.

"How can you .... how is it .....   " she stammered, clutching her throat.

"My dearest friend, the linguistics professor Dr Benjamin East, had a wager with me many years ago that he could turn a guttersnipe into a lady.  He picked up a simple market girl and taught her to speak the King's English.  He dressed her in fine gowns, taught her table manners, and turned her into a refined lady.  He took her to the races and to diplomatic parties.  He even changed her name, to Esmeralda.  She was his model student, she fooled them all.  Nobody suspected she was an urchin from the East End."

Gladys regained her composure.  "Yes, and then he dumped me in the bleedin' snow!"  she retorted.  "When he had won his bet with you, he had no more use for me and kicked me out.  I was left to support myself the only way I knew how, by dancing."

"I know," said Jean Valjean Magwitch, bowing his head, "and I regretted the way my friend treated you.   I have searched high and low for you for many years, hoping that you had not fallen on hard times.  At the same time I have been following the progress of this young man,"   he lifted Quasi up slightly by his collar, "and it is with great joy that I find my two protégés have found each other.  It is a kind of serendipity."

"Aaaaooowww milord,"  laughed Gladys, linking arms with the top-hatted man with the shiny shoes, "I wash me face an' 'ands afore I come, I did!"  

Bill Bailey breaks into cockney music ("da-da, da da-da-DAH"), and the bells of Notre Dame ring out as the crowd join the three principals in a high-kicking chorus of "Consider yerself at home".

F  I  N

THEY MADE ME DEAF, YOU KNOW (PART 1)

Paris, 17th March 1482


Baldrick "Quasi" McModo lurched along the boulevard, gritting his tooth against the freezing sleet that battered his pockmarked face.   With his one good eye he glanced up at the twin towers of the brand new cathedral, and poked his tongue out at the gargoyles which gurned back at him in mockery.

"Gaaaah!!"  he rasped in his cracked voice.  A passing toff crossed the road.   Quasi cackled, and spat thick phlegm into the straw lining the thoroughfare.   "Feck arf!"  he barked.  The toff started to run away.

He turned the corner into the street where She lived.  She Wot Must Be Obeyed.  She Wot Owned Him.   He whistled "On the street where you live" from My Fair Lady. 


A bucketful of urine launched from a third-floor window crashed onto the dirt road in front of him, splashing his already filthy rags.   Lerner & Loewe were dirty words in these parts.

"Feckin gobshite bastards!!"  he roared, waving two of the three remaining fingers on his good hand at the perpetrators above.  He hopped around the puddle of piss, and hirpled unevenly to Her house, where he pulled on the bellrope and assumed a position of abject lack of self-esteem while he waited for the gatekeeper, Jacek, to shuffle to open the door.


 



Fifteen minutes passed.








"Who go there?"  eventually came the muffled demand.

"It be I, Baldrick "Quasi" McModo, executive slave to Milady Esmeralda de Wayne de la Bough," he whined in his most obsequious whine.

He heard the sound of bolts being slid back, and the door opened with a creak.  A crabbed hand appeared.   

"Cross me palm with silver, luvvie!"  

Quasi kicked at the door savagely and pushed through.  Jacek was lying flat on his back. 

"Ye Scotch baskit!"  he moaned.  "Ye've broke me back!  Yer gipsy queen will be told!"

Quasi clambered over him and made for the caravan in the stableyard at the back.  Milady's 27 pairs of shoes were set outside on the steps for him to clean.  He got out his filthy handkerchief and did his best to summon up some spit.   When he had cleaned all her shoes, he scratched at the door, subserviently.  

"Entrez,"  came the peremptory response.  His heart sank and soared at the same time.  His daily agony and ecstasy was about to start.  There was nothing in this world, NOTHING, worse than being in love with a social climbing gypsy princess.   He adjusted his hump, assumed the position, and crawled on his hands and knees into the caravan.    

Milady Esmeralda de Wayne de la Bough, formerly Gladys Perkins of Wapping, was choosing ribbons from a box.  

"Ah, there you are, McModo," she called down to him from her pedestal.  "Help me decorate this tambourine.  What day is it today?"

Quasi cast his good eye through the hole in the roof at the sky.  

"March 17th, if it please Milady, begging your pardon."  

"Green then.  Here!"  she threw a tambourine at him and a bunch of green ribbons.  "It'll be Oh Danny Boy, My Lagan Love, and Black Velvet Band,  and finish up with Seven Drunken Nights.  Go and practice being a leprechaun." 

Quasi shuffled out, weaving the green ribbons into the tambourine as he went.   He sat patiently on the steps,  waiting for Milady to appear, some hours later, looking like the absinthe fairy.    He struggled to keep up with her as she riverdanced down the street to Notre Dame Cathedral, where beggars scurried away in terror at the sight of her terrible greenness.  She looked up at the stone effigies of saints.  


"Now where is he .... Saint Patrick?   Oh this one will do. Give me my tambourine, slave!" 

Quasi handed her the green-ribboned tambourine and prepared to caper along behind her spirited Irish gypsy dance with the collecting hat.   

"Ah one, ah two, ah one-two-three-four .... " 

Milady launched herself into a performance reminiscent of Isadora Duncan doing the Harlem Shake.  Quasi hopped along behind her in the snow, ecstatic in his misery and humiliation.  She was so beautiful, and he was so .... enslaved.   She had saved him from the gibbet, and now she made him suffer, oh how he suffered.  It was exquisite.  His misery was complete .....  there was no happier one-eyed hunchback in all of Paris.

 

(to be continued)

DANCING IN THE STREET

I am notoriously slow in embracing new technology.  I only got a flatscreen TV two years ago.  I only started using a mobile phone in 2000, and in 12 years I've not really progressed much in terms of model.  Up until last week I was still using a basic Nokia that fits nicely in your hand and you can text with one thumb while walking along the street. 

I have to admit my earlier reluctance was mostly down to fear - I didn't understand how they worked, which makes me thicker than Bubble in Ab Fab.  But then I saw Aunty Marianne's new Galaxy III and I decided it was Time.   I so hate to be out of the loop.  And so, dear readers, I finally succumbed.  I have joined the Twittering classes.  But I had no idea what I was buying.  Android or iPhone?  Jelly Bean or Ice Cream Sandwich?  Keyboard or touchscreen?  How many megapixels should I have?  How much should I pay?  The prices ranged from 89 euros to 890 euros.  How would I find my way in the digital jungle?

In the end it was a combination of advice, pinning the tail on the donkey, and the January sales.  I ended up with a rather amazing piece of kit without having to take out a mortgage.  The damn thing worked before I'd even put my SIM card in!   It went into my Facebook and Gmail accounts and fished out all my contacts.  How clever is that?  

Some of my friends say my address book will now be on the FBI's Rol-a-dex, but frankly that doesn't worry me.  Back in the day I was once tracked by the Libyans, because I made a passing reference to Colonel Gaddafi in a blog post.  The idea of Libyan goons running around Brussels looking for a woman with a fruit basket on her head just made me chuckle.

Some say it is dangerous to be broadcasting your whereabouts at all times.  As someone who just goes to work, goes home again, and occasionally goes to the supermarket, I really think the FBI might get bored with me fairly quickly.  I subscribe to the philosophy "If you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear".  And my life is an open book, with odds of 1000-1 on me being bundled into a black limo by the Men in Black with earpieces.  In fact it would rather liven things up a bit.

 

Hello boys

Talking of earpieces, the music player was one of the main reasons I made this purchase.  I have recently started walking to work, in the interest of my health and amortizing those second-hand Karrimor walking shoes I got in a Sue Ryder shop last summer, and the 45 minute march is made much more pleasant by a bit of thrash metal.   My cheap old mp3 player was very unreliable, and in the early days I spent most of the walk fiddling with the jack trying to get sound in both ears.  It was time to buy a new one, and this new phone has a fabulous music player.  I can't be doing with those earbud things, they keep falling out, so I bought a pair of spiffy JVC headphones, which block out all extraneous noise and keep my ears warm on cold days.  They make me look a bit like Colin from Spooks but that may serve to confuse the blokes from the FBI who are following along in the black limo. 

I'm walking backwards to Spart Towers

I now go bouncing off to work each morning with Nirvana or AC/DC blasting out through my cans.  Some tunes are better than others as a walking aid.  Michael Jackson is not too good, as moonwalking backwards can double the time it takes to get to work, not to mention frightening people in the street when I grab my crotch and go "Oooh!".   120 bpm (beats per minute) is the optimal rhythm for walking at a brisk pace.  By the time I get to the uphill bit I've zoned out so sail up it on a cloud of Nigerian Afrobeat.   Bouncing downhill through a snow-covered park to the rhythms of Fela Kuti was one of the high points of last week.   As a result I now get to the office full of beans and dancing.  Everybody wins!

This phone also has a projector.  Now you might think this is a bit of superfluous gadgetry, but you never know when the urge to make a powerpoint presentation is going to strike.  I've also found that it will project anything you're looking at on a flat surface up to 3 metres away.  And you can stream videos.  So in the summer I'll be able to watch EastEnders while sitting in the garden with a Pimms.     I could turn Gorbals into a human screen and project George Clooney onto him.  The possibilities are endless.

 

But you know what?   I can't text with one hand while walking.

Pfffft.