Torrential rainstorms are a feature of life in France Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]Well, summer did finally arrive here in P'tit Moulin and the warm balmy days are back. I must say they are very welcome, and could have been here sooner. The girls are all out in their skimpiest dresses, to show off their golden-tanned skin and the boys...well, who cares about the boys anyway?
Of course, here in central France the climate is interesting, to say the least.
The parade Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]
A perfect road to speed on--and for flics to hide on. Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]Mostly, when the French talk about les flics, they are talking specifically about traffic cops, who are universally regarded with almost unlimited contempt and no respect at all. However, when the occasion merits, they expand the concept to include any other kind of cop who’s been getting in the way of the French being French.
Ceremony in the village square[/caption]Well I can't believe it's that time of year again but it surely is, Quattors Juillet, Bastille Day, la Fete de la Revolution here in France, and elsewhere too. I'll be out an about today so will add to this post later. Meantime, have one for me!
Houses in situations like this often have damp walls. Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]In the past walls were rendered and plastered with lime. Lime is a truly wonderful material that can be bent to a whole series of uses, but as a render on stone it is unsurpassed. It' 'breathes', allowing poisture to escape and suppressing damp walls. This is because it is very porous. Lime render, however, needs regular maintenance, and it is very difficult even for a professional to get a polished, smoothfinish on it. So why are there damp walls in so many old houses today?
The growng French anti-hahlal movement has seized on a blatant attempt to destroy French culture[/caption]Pork. It's such a mainstay of French cuisine, that it's frankly impossible to conceive of French food culture without it. Every thing from saucisson to saucisses, fried, grilled, cured, dried, you name it, the French have a way of eating pork like that.
It goes back to the time of the Gauls, you know, Asterix and his lads, roasting wild boar on spits.
Napoleon Was a Big Guy Really[/caption]Napoleon was actually a tall guy. Did you know that? It’s true. The legend that the great conqueror of Europe was severely vertically challenged is just that—a legend. Maybe not quite an urban myth—I don’t think they had those back then—but nevertheless, a myth.
It illustrates, however, the mismatch between the French and Anglo-Saxon worlds.
The kind of road the Gendarmes like to catch speeders on. Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]My friend Antoine the potter had a little incident with the Gendarmes from Bligny not long ago. Now before I begin this tale, I feel I should put to rest a belief that has become, apparently (according to my children,) current in the UK in the last few years.
This is that the Gendarmes in France are not real police. Well, they are, and this is a classic bit of Anglo-Saxon, er, confusion. I believe it has even been aired on that odious arch-slimeball Stephen Fry’s television show; not that that would make it any more the truth.
So let me explain.
Hot Cross Buns are eaten every Easter, Pic: Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. Used under a Creative Commons Licence[/caption]Well, hot cross buns actually originated in Assyria as a part of worship of the Moon Goddess Ishtar. At least that is the earliest record we have of them. The Egyptians continued the tradition of offering cakes to their Moon-Goddess Hathor. They decorated the cakes with bull's horns, as the ox was the preferred sacrifice of the Goddess. The cakes, therefore, were symbolic of the sacrificed bull, whose flesh would be eaten by worshippers.
Hathor has been identified with Ishtar and Astarte. Astarte is Ashtoreth, who was worshipped by King Solomon, as mentioned in the Old Testament (1 Kings 11, 2), and to whom he erected a temple or shrine in Jerusalem.
Watkins' Ley-lines--a desire to see pattern. Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]Ley-lines were invented by an Englishman called Alfred Watkins, who had spent much time cycling around the countryside near his home. In 1925, he wrote a book called “The Old Straight Track”, in which he described a revelation he’d had while looking at a map of Herefordshire four years earlier. He had suddenly seen a network of straight lines that connected points of human activity, such as
“Mounds, Long-barrows, Cairns, Cursus, Dolmens, Standing stones, mark-stones, Stone circles, Henges, Water-markers (moats, ponds, springs, fords, wells), Castle, Beacon-hills, Churches, Cross-roads, Notches in hills,”
Grip the fiddle and bow so that the bow crosses the strings at a right angle[/caption]under the chin sorted out, the next thing to address is the right hand's grip on the bow. This can cause a great deal of trouble though in my opinion is not as tricky as the left hand. Again, the secret is to avoid tension; the hand must be relaxed. To do this, all four fingers and the thumb must be in contact with the stick, and all must be curved. This is hugely important. The most common grip errors are for the little or pinkie finger to lock and become straight and rigid. Do not allow this to happen. Another is for the pinkie to lift off the stick, which is also wrong. More subtle and harder to see but just as damaging is for the thumb to become stiff.
God Creating Adam, Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michelangelo.[/caption]At the end of the day, the final word that the religiously-disposed have is to say that “It is so because I believe it to be so,” before covering their ears. For them, this trumps everything.
This is the hook that caught Descartes when he confronted the issue, and then backed off very quickly. “I think,” he said, “Therefore I am.” This is fine. He is self-aware therefore he is sure he exists. He cannot be entirely sure that he exists as he perceives himself or that anything that is around him is as he perceives it, but he does make a very convincing argument, based on the progression of rational logic, that it is so (and thus takes several hundred pages to confirm what any pragmatist already knows. But that’s an aside.) However, when confronted by the idea of God, God must exist, he says “Because he cannot imagine a world in which he does not.” Oops.
FIlm image of Red Castle, Angus, Scotland[/caption]Surely it is a nasty, dirty, smelly procedure best consigned to the bucket of history? Surely digital is cheaper, easier, faster, more modern? And worst of all, film is analogue—well that’s just not right.
Is it?
