Becca's Blog

The Transfiguration Window

2012-02-12T14:56:00.000-08:00

What does a window do? It keeps us warm. It lets us see. It shows us what would otherwise be hidden. It lets in the light.

I’m not religious, but even to me the sacred metaphors seem to echo pretty loudly. And I also know that the stained glass of churches and cathedrals are some of the most beautiful windows around, mesmerising creations in glowing colours. Think of the breathtaking medieval glass at King’s Chapel in Cambridge, the Rose window in Notre Dame. Or, my new favourite, the stunning arch window in Durham Cathedral unveiled just over a year and a half ago, made by Thomas Denny.

The first thing that hits you is a bright burst of white light, a brilliant strip that runs down the centre of the window. Glass in orangey amber hues edges it, with purple-blue at the edges. Peer a bit closer, and you see people. Small figures with delicately edged faces populate the window, scenes from the Bible played out in flickering light.

Like Van Gogh's paintings, The Transfiguration Window has a compelling power that comes into its own when you're standing there in front of it – it's a piece of art that's full of vivid life. Perhaps it's because the confluence of religious meaning and artistic means couldn't be more apt. This window depicts Christ becoming radiant; it quite literally transfigures the light.

Park Street, Bristol

2012-01-27T00:02:00.000-08:00

The Artist

2012-01-25T23:50:00.000-08:00

*Smiles*, *waves*, *winks*. *Thumbs up* for The Artist!

The Birthday Boys

2012-01-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

Where and when is it set? The chilly climes of Antarctica, 1910-12.
Who is in it? The five main characters are the real men who lost their lives on the fateful expedition to the South Pole: Petty Officer Edgar (Taff) Evans; Dr Edward (Uncle Bill) Wilson; The Owner: Capt. Robert Falcon (Con) Scott; Lt. Henry Robertson (Birdie) Bowers; Capt. Lawrence Edward (Titus) Oates
What happens? You already know the ending: the trek was doomed, the Norwegians beat the Brits to it, Oates goes outside 'and may be some time'. The magic of this book lies in the telling.
So how is it told? Five narratives, each from a different perspective, each compelling in its own way. We don't know which is the most accurate, but then when do we in life?
What are the best bits? Apart from its wonderful blend of fact and fiction (the imagining of the 'truth' behind some of the famous photographs from the voyage, for example), it is Bainbridge's gift for description, and her metaphors that are captivating.
Here's a touching, vivid moment, amid the slog of a three-man, 19-day trek to Cape Crozier. Undernourished, frostbitten, weary, the explorers still found time to appreciate the surroundings, writes Birdie:
'It wasn't all misery. On one of our halts we lay spread-eagled on the ice and stared up at a sky blazing with the glory of the most wonderful aurora I'd ever witnessed. I groaned beneath the splendour of those silken curtains, yellow, green, and orange, billowing at the window of the heavens.'

The soul of a city

2011-12-28T02:23:00.000-08:00

At the heart of Bristol lies the harbour. I know this because a sign on the side of one of the hideously bland new blocks of flats that flank the waterside tells me so. A sign that claims this historic area for its own, and, even more grandly, says these abodes are helping to create a 'soul' in the centre of the city. Well, they've got the right place, but – I'm sorry – the harbourside doesn't need the help of these architectural soggy tissues to enrich its personality. This city already has that. Take a look at the signposts on the otherside of the walkway for a hint of what really makes Bristol tick. Porto Quay, Bordeaux Quay, Hanover Quay. Yes, voyages. Ships, sailors, foreign countries. The port has formed Bristol’s soul. And like any soul, there is both dark and light within it. That spark of adventure, spirit of daring is there – it was from this West Country city that John Cabot sailed to America (thinking it was Asia); but there’s also the other side – Bristol was one of the homes of the slave trade, this dirty money providing the means to build mansion-like houses for wealthy owners, as well as – more problematically for us now – fund schools, almshouses, and aid hospitals and churches. Bristol’s history is bound to the water. Of course, that's not true now. The harbour no longer welcomes trading ships, no longer has that buzz and exchange of goods, languages and tales. But Bristol is still a city of creativity and exploration. It's home to the BBC's Natural History Unit, the crucible for Concorde, the backdrop to countless hot air balloons. That's why I get infuriated every time I walk past that marketing board, and smile when I read the quay names. Yes, they're named after Bristol's twin cities rather than the places which boats set sail for on a regular basis, but they point to one of its most valuable qualities.

A Rose Window on Bach

2011-11-20T05:13:00.000-08:00

We can compare Bach’s chorales and arias to the rose windows of cathedrals, in which reflections continually change from brilliant major to somber minor. These rose windows are the soul of the cathedrals and they speak to the innermost part of human beings. So too do Bach’s chorales and arias. They constitute the romantic element of his immense output and they speak to us like no other romanticism. (Walter Rummel: Credo d’un artiste [1950])

Rather a beautiful quote by the Romantic French pianist Walter Rummel, who transcribed parts of JS Bach's Cantatas for piano

Lincoln lights

2011-11-08T00:22:00.000-08:00

The Lincoln Center: New York's home to dance, opera, theatre and music - and lots of lights.

Halloween, a la New York

2011-11-08T00:19:00.000-08:00

Berio's 'Aldo'

2011-10-31T01:10:00.000-07:00

The dynamic, inventive Aurora Orchestra hit Bristol this Halloween weekend. Their evening of what might be best described as 'concert theatre', called Thriller: Automatic Writing, was a great idea – intersperse music for varying numbers of chamber musicians with excerpts by a top horror writer to create an evening of spooky unease. I'm not sure it quite hung together – more of which later – but one of the musical gems included was Luciano Berio's 'Aldo' from Duets for Two Violins. Its hushed whisperings speak with a poignant simplicity. This is one of the only videos of it I could dig out from YouTube - the Aurora's players conjured a bit more magic - but it gives you a sense of it:

Voici que la saison décline

2011-10-11T23:49:00.000-07:00

Voici que la saison décline,
L'ombre grandit, l'azur décroît,
Le vent fraîchit sur la colline,
L'oiseau frissonne, l'herbe a froid.

Août contre septembre lutte ;
L'océan n'a plus d'alcyon ;
Chaque jour perd une minute,
Chaque aurore pleure un rayon.

La mouche, comme prise au piège,
Est immobile à mon plafond ;
Et comme un blanc flocon de neige,
Petit à petit, l'été fond.

Victor Hugo

Last night in my French class, we read a beautiful poem by Victor Hugo. I can't find a translation online but, even if you don't speak French, just read it out loud. Each word has a wonderful sound, each line a telling rhythm, which come across irrespective of meaning. It's a three-verse gem full of evocative images: the shadows (l'ombre) are getting longer, the grass (l'herbe) feels the cold. A particularly well-crafted line, as another in my lesson pointed out, opens the second stanza: 'Août contre septembre lutte'. The lutte – struggle – is encapsulated by a line that's tricky to say, that rushes towards the word 'septembre', itself full of sonorous stiles to climb over.

Options

2011-09-07T23:47:00.000-07:00

On the London tube yesterday, I looked down a row of seated passengers. Four of them, all next to each other. One was playing Solitaire on his phone; one was reading on a Sony eBook reader; another had their head in a free Metro newspaper; the final one had a paperback book. All enthralled by the written word (ignore the Solitaire), all choosing different mediums. Which would you go for?

Gorilla invasion

2011-08-18T14:47:00.000-07:00

Bristol has been invaded by gorillas. All around the city, there are primates – lurking, guarding buildings, looking across the river, acting as bridge sentries. You name it, they've got it covered. They're chunky, powerful and pretty tall.

Perhaps I should point out at this point, if you hadn't already guessed, that these gorillas are statues. Decorated in a variety of colours and gaudy designs, the West Country gorillas – no relation to Liverpool's lambananas – are here to celebrate the 175th anniversary of Bristol zoo.

But, suddenly, after seeing Project NIm – the film about a misguided 1970s experiment to find out whether chimps could learn language and communicate with human beings (conclusion: yes, they can sign language; no, they can't say a lot more than 'I want berries', 'I want to drink', 'I want to play') – their presence here has taken on a slightly more ominous hue. I'd better not watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes then…

Gorisambard

2011-08-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

Meet the suavest gorilla in town: Gorisambard.

Wedding bells

2011-07-25T15:14:00.000-07:00

At a wedding in a gorgeous old church buried in the English countryside this weekend, there were some beautiful readings and some uplifting singing. Here are two of my favourite moments: a touching piece by American writer Raymond Carver, and William Harris's luxuriant setting of a text by Edmund Spenser.

Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.

And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Raymond Carver

Faire is the heaven

Vive le carrousel!

2011-07-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

Why is it that so many French cities have carousels in their centres? Lyon has one in the Place de la République, Paris has them aplenty, including in the Jardins de Plantes and Les Tuileries, while Aix-en-Provence has one at the foot of its Champs-Elysées – the Cours Mirabeau. Is it a necessary bureaucratic requirement? A tradition passed on from merry-go-round-loving parent to child? A way of sprucing up a town centre? Enchanted by the touch of magical whimsy it adds to a city, I thought I'd try to find out a bit more. Turns out the merry-go-round has a long history in France: while it was probably invented in Italy, when Louis XIV was in need of some entertainment for a lavish party, he ordered his engineers to build a carousel. It hid gilded chairs for women, and horses and swans for the men. Merci Louis, et vive le carrousel!

The gorillas have arrived

2011-07-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

The long wait for lunch…

2011-07-02T04:50:00.000-07:00

Back to blogging

2011-06-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

Blog silence over! A new job and a new house has added up to little more than some unpublished blank pages. Oh, I've had a few things to blog about (I say this with certainty only because I seem to blog about this, that and nothing in particular in any case), but somehow I haven't managed to put, if not pen to paper, finger to keyboard. But, as with everything, once you get back in the habit, there's always time. More to follow…

Russian monarchs

2011-05-17T23:40:00.000-07:00

Spotted in a Bristol window…

Bartók's Violinists (1)

2011-05-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Bela Bartók was a pianist – and a pretty darn good one at that – but he also had a bit of a thing for the violin. While his own experience could furnish him with the necessary knowledge to write everything from pedagogical exercises (Mikrokosmos) to dazzling showcase pieces (the Piano Concertos) for the piano, he turned to others for inspiration when it came to the violin. Behind each of the Hungarian composer's violin works, then, you're likely to find a real person, a tantalising story, enshrined in music.

It started with Stefi Geyer. Bartók was infatuated with the young violinist, and in 1907, when she was 17 and he was 26, wrote her a Concerto. Spilling the beans about the intensity of his feeling for her in his letters only seems to have served to make her run…

Here's a taste of her playing:

And here's the lushly Romantic, rarely played First Violin Concerto that Bartók penned for her. The first movement was, he wrote, 'the idealised Stefi, celestial and inward'; she herself described it as a portrait of 'the young girl he loved'.

Road rage à la francaise

2011-05-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

It’s a la mode, at the moment, the ‘velo’. Boris bikes in London, vélibs in Paris (shame Bristol, the UK’s ‘No. 1’ cycling city has ditched its scheme). But hopping on to a free bike isn’t without its perils. The obvious challenges of the free-for-all Etoiles roundabout aside, there’s the two-wheel version of road rage to contend with: Velib vitriol, let’s call it. Queuing up outside the Hotel de Ville for the Impressionists exhibition (free, fantastic, for more, check back here), a little vignette amused me. An impeccably chic French woman in her 40s, clothed in a little black coat and sporting little lunettes, tottered in on her unwieldy vélib. Alas, no space to be seen. As she wobbled up and down the row of bikes, hoping, perhaps, that one of the parked cycles might disappear, she made the fatal mistake of not checking behind her. Et allez, hop, a cyclist zipped out of their space, et voila, another - zut, alors - someone else! - nipped in. Eagle-eyes and a killer instinct are, clearly, necessary accessories for any Parisian cyclists, ones this rider, for all her elegance, didn’t possess: ‘I’ve been waiting for ten minutes!’ she shouted, practically hitting the unchivalrous usurper with her handbag, '10 minutes!’ (All the while notching up the euros, if she was already over half an hour.) ‘I’m not scared of you,’ he flashed back (Yes, he did actually say this). ’10 minutes!’ Cue flurry of French abuse. The queue, at that point, moved on; the Velibtriol faded into the distance.

Thought

2011-05-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Graham Greene

Happy Birthday Brahms

2011-05-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

Here's the Poco allegretto from his Symphony No. 3, performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Fürtwangler.

Scenes from Paris (1)

2011-05-02T09:13:00.000-07:00

The Kiss in the Musée Rodin. The French sculptor's famous depiction of the tragic lovers Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malaesta is, simply, stunning. I've never seen any of Rodin's sculptures 'in the flesh' before. And it does feel like these marble and bronze masterpieces are, somehow, alive. Walking around the Parisian home of his sculptures – a house and gardens – it doesn't seem too ridiculous a flight of fancy that, perhaps, when your back is turned or after the key is turned in the gate lock at night and darkness has fallen, the sculptures draw breath, step off their plinths and go for a saunter and a steak-frites.

Ferrier finale

2011-04-29T05:21:00.001-07:00

The Kathleen Ferrier Award finals are this evening in the Wigmore Hall. Three cheers for the fantastic Yshani Perinpanaygam, who'll be accompanying soprano Elena Sancho in them. I'll be crossing fingers they win! I should add in a disclaimer that as I know Yshani this is a biased post, but it's not needed as she's such a wonderful accompanist, and her playing speaks for itself… Good luck!

Lieberson

2011-04-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

Peter Lieberson, the American composer, has died. I'd only recently discovered his work, led to it through the incomparably sublime voice of the great mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, whom he married in 1999. His luscious settings of five love poems by Pablo Neruda were composed for her – Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs shimmer in this music, although there's a flavour of their South American heritage too – and their story is poignant. As the singer traces the tale of love from first flush to death do us part, the knowledge that Hunt Lieberson was battling breast cancer at the time of their writing is hard to forget. Tragically, she died in 2006. In this extract, recorded with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under James Levine, Hunt Lieberson sings 'Amor mio, si muero y tu no mueres':

My love, if I die and you don't, let's not give grief an even greater field...this meadow where we find ourselves, O little infinity! We give it back. But Love, this love has not ended, it is like a long river."

Paris in the Springtime

2011-04-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

The countdown to my trip to la belle France begins. Time for a little Ella…

Moonlight

2011-04-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

XIX

The moonlight when it shines on the grass,
I don’t know what it reminds me of...
It reminds me of my old maid
Telling me fairy tales.
And Our Lady dressed as a beggar
Helping mistreated children...

If I can’t believe they’re true anymore,
Why does the moonlight shine on the grass?

(3/4/1914)

From The Keeper of Flocks by Alberto Caeiro

Tomorrow's Tangle

2011-04-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

This is a temporary photo taken on my phone, to be replaced by a hypothetically better one from my camera this weekend. There's a wonderfully evocative gate – if a gate can be such a thing – in Bristol that opens on to stone steps winding up the hillside slopes of Cliftonwood to the summit of Clifton Village. Made of iron, the archway's now so rusty it looks like it might shiver and crumble if you dared to touch it. Amid leaves and curls runs a motto beginning 'Tomorrow's tangle' and continuing with I know not what, thanks to the loss of various letters. Google has helped me fill in the gaps: 'Tomorrow's tangle to ye windes resign' – wise words, oh yes – comes from Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. His version of the Persian verses were published in the 19th century. I wonder who made this arch in Bristol and what inspired them to choose this line of poetry as an adornment?

Le mépris

2011-04-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

I watched Jean-Luc Godard's Le mépris this week. This 1960s French classic unfolds slowly, but it's beautiful. Set against a backdrop of exploring what cinema is and how to make a film, the crux of the plot is a tragic love story. Although that makes it sound more dramatic than the action turns out to be: in essence, this film depicts the moment two people fall out of love, what happens when the magic has gone. Godard is spot on in his observation and, for that, the film's moving and memorable.

Memory lane

2011-04-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

Songs often remind me, as I'm sure they do you, of places and people. This one I haven't heard for about four years, but when I heard it earlier today it took me back straight away to Lyon, where I started this blog. There I lived in a 'module' – that's a flat to you or me; just imagine a flatpack apartment and that's pretty much what it was like, hence the name – with 'Les filles' (three French, one Russian). Our rooms were off a main kitchen and living room, with a blue Ikea 'canapé' (sofa - the Oxford English Dictionary assures me this word actually exists with this meaning in English as well as French) in the corner. Our 'at-home' soundtrack was French radio which has about three recognisable songs amid copious amounts of bland wallpaper pop. Peter von Poehl was one of the ones that stood out:

One song always leads to another. Here's a little taster of Beth Gibbons, who I also heard early on in France after watching L'auberge Espagnole, a bit of a cult 'living abroad' film:

Frankenstein…

2011-03-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

… frank-en-tastic!

Updates

2011-03-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

• Venue has been saved. Going monthly sounds good to me. Much as I love having all Bristol happenings between two handy covers, there are some parts of the magazine I could happily wave goodbye to. However, I have a suspicion this might just be a prolongation of the agony. Can Venue really survive as a freebie, and shackled to Folio magazine?

• Igor Stravinsky has fallen behind the fireplace in my new house. He can't be extracted. I've tried. And I'm not going to try the bent coathanger tactic, as last time I did that the radiator fell off the wall. Besides, I quite like the idea that he's hiding away there, along with Mozart.

• The globe has been turned the right way up. Curiouser and curiouser… I'm now wondering if my current downstairs neighbour reads this blog? Hello if you do.

In praise of books

2011-03-16T00:49:00.000-07:00

'The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.'

Roald Dahl (Matilda)

La bibliotheque

2011-03-16T00:46:00.000-07:00

Stravinsky and Mozart

2011-03-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

By mistake, I seem to have started a collection of quirky black and white photos of great modernists (don't stop reading). Here's Stravinsky for music, and a while ago I had Picasso to cover art. Both are on my kitchen wall. I need a writer to go with them.

It's a topsy-turvy world…

2011-03-13T09:58:00.000-07:00

My downstairs neighbour has put a globe outside his front door. I wonder why it's upside down? It makes it quite hard to read the names of the countries. The occupant of the flat doesn't have an Australian accent, as far as I could detect, so it's probably not out of a patriotic desire to have his home country on top of the world. Perhaps he likes to confound expectations - it's actually a statement of his, erm, quirky, subversive personality. Maybe it broke and he glued it back together, only to discover, after all his efforts, it was the wrong way up? Thoughts on a postcard please.

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-09T14:29:00.000-08:00

Pancakes were a must yesterday for Shrove Tuesday. (Why don't we eat them more often? Everyone else does.) Although I'll admit operating a double standard as I haven't given up anything for Lent. Nevertheless I thought I'd mark Ash Wednesday with some lines from one of my favourite poets, TS Eliot. Here's the third part of his Ash Wednesday, published in 1930 and dealing with his recent conversion to Anglicanism.

III
At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond
repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

TS Eliot

Flying high

2011-03-08T14:09:00.000-08:00

Spotted: the first hot air balloon of the year. Lazily drifting over a hazy sky early(ish) this morning. Spring must be near.

Decisions, decisions…

2011-03-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

Iphigénie en Tauride

2011-03-06T18:30:00.000-08:00

A little late blogging about this one, but last week I popped down to the Cinema de Lux in Bristol. That's a pretty rare event in itself: give me the smaller screens, and, admittedly hit and miss, 'arty' films of the Watershed over the popcorn-fuelled audiences and Hollywood blockbusters of Cabot Circus any day. Apart from, I've discovered, a handful of Saturdays this spring when the cavernous spaces and football-pitch sized screens are transformed into surrogate opera houses, in which case, count me in.

The Met Opera House from New York has been broadcasting its productions live to cinemas around the UK for a good while now, but I've been a bit slow on the uptake. Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, starring Plácido Domingo and Susan Graham as the seemingly doomed brother and sister, was my first taste of it. I'll be going back for more.

'Short of fainting I could not have been more moved than when I saw a performance of Gluck’s masterpiece Iphigénie en Tauride,' wrote Berlioz. Fainting wasn't on my agenda, but Gluck's piece, written for the Paris Opera, is a gripping tale, which from the outset seems for a tragic ending.

To give you an idea, Iphigénie is obliged to sacrifice any strangers landing on the island of Tauride. Her brother Oreste, who she hasn't seen for 15 years and doesn't recognise, pitches up with a friend after being shipwrecked. You see where this is going… Oh, and the backstory is that their father was murdered by their mother, so Oreste killed their mother in order to avenge his father's death. It's not a cheery tale. Although, without wanting to give the ending away, I will say I wouldn't bother with the deluxe box of kleenex…

Secondhand memories

2011-02-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

Bookshop memories from George Orwell, or, why you wouldn't want to open a secondhand bookshop…

Blog log

2011-02-28T22:10:00.000-08:00

Over the past year lots of friends have started blogs of all sorts – from photography and sketching to explanations and ponderings . I've also been sent or recommended, not to mention stumbled across, new blogs that I enjoy following. Here they all are in no particular order. The descriptions are by the blog's respective authors. Where none are forthcoming I have improvised. Amendments and additions welcome. Happy reading!

• Adventures in Lomography: 'Steph//// Camera: Diana F+ (and bits and pieces..)///very occasionally, the odd Canon IXUS 50 snap'

• D for Dalrymple: 'D for Dalrymple is written by Christina. Christina is a freelance human who lives in London and is consistently bemused by her tendency to describe herself in the third person.'

• Harmony beat: 'William Harvey's thoughts about cultural diplomacy, including diary entries from his job as Violin and Viola Teacher at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music'

• DrawingaDiagnosis: 'Feeling inspired by all the patients and amazing people I met out in South Africa, I set out to do a drawing a day of things I see in medicine.'

• Amandapondo: How things happen and why they do

• Somewhere Boy: Where a music graduate and librarian writes 'superficial analyses of things I like and regurgitate the opinions of others'

• The inner workings of...: 'I am an Aardman Story man, currently boarding on the next stop-mo feature - The Pirates!'

• Gareth Across States: Life across the pond

• um blogue azul: 'Vários aspectos das suas vidas se associavam à cor azul.' (No, I can't understand Portuguese. Those few lessons when I was in France didn't pay off! But the YouTube videos are good for all.)

• The Age of Uncertainty: 'This is supposed to be a blog about books, but something went wrong..'

• Human Planet: 'On location with this landmark BBC Earth production'

• People reading poems: Erm, exactly what it says on the tin

Just buy a Venue!

2011-02-24T23:34:00.000-08:00

I'm completely gutted to hear Bristol's Venue magazine faces closure. If you're reading this anywhere in the city, please go and buy a Venue now! There's no other local magazine that can touch it for comprehensive arts and culture listings, witty and provocative writing and general good humour. That's not to mention the genius of the 'I saw you' and 'I'm sore at you' pages. Help save Venue magazine now and buy a copy!

Eddie Izzard – Learning French

2011-02-22T15:42:00.000-08:00

I've just remembered how funny Eddie Izzard is. Enjoy this sketch, otherwise known as The Tale of the Monkey, the Cat and the Mouse…

Time for a new book

2011-02-21T08:07:00.000-08:00

I've been in reading heaven since yesterday. I have discovered George Eliot. Victorian novelists are an arena I've only explored in patches: lots of Thomas Hardy, two of the three Brönte sisters, a little Charles Dickens, no Anthonny Trollope. Does a TV adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters count? And George Eliot, shallow though it seems, somehow those volumes always looked so doorstop-like…

The happy coincidence of a friend's recommendation (I was devastated to realise that I'll never have the chance to read Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda again for the first time,' she mused wistfully) and the lucky find of a secondhand bookstall in Greenwich market selling Deronda, plus the capacious minutes on the Bristol-London train, means that the last few hours I've been immersed in the so-deftly observed world of Gwendolen Harleth as conjured by Eliot. Those 700 odd pages have been transformed from doorstop to doorway…

The Secret in their Eyes

2011-02-15T14:17:00.000-08:00

The Oscar-winning film The Secret in their Eyes is both a love story and a thriller, set in the now, then and the yet-to-be. I'm not sure the trailer does its compelling tale justice, which is better, I suppose, than all those trailers that give away the best bits of the film. Anyway, it's a great watch.

Human Planet

2011-02-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

City dwellers, listen in. For an eye-opening taste of what life is like around the globe, just how different it can be, watch the BBC's stunning Human Planet series. Home can be many things – a boat in the Pacific, a dizzingly high treehouse, located in lands frozen by snow or dried out by sun. In this clip, one of the 'tree people' pops out for some honey. It's a bit more hair-raising than nipping to the corner shop…

Piano greats

2011-02-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

Name your favourite pianist. Tough question, so I named five. They might change tomorrow, but hey, here are snippets of my current top keyboard wizards (in no particular order).

1. Martha Argerich

2. Alfred Brendel

3. Murray Perahia

4. Radu Lupu

5.Glenn Gould

Of course, the likes of Rachmaninov and Richter should be in this list, but there's something about having seen a pianist play live that, for me at least, makes them jump up the list over their long-gone counterparts. (Glenn Gould being the exception here.)

Daffodils

2011-02-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

Daffodils are one of my favourite flowers. With their cheerful yellow, white and orange trumpets and stars, they herald the warmth of spring. I don't have any particular hankering to grow them, but, mooching around a fusty antique shop, I spotted a 50-year-old book all about how to cultivate daffodils. I wouldn't have bought it, except for the wonderful first sentence, and ensuing paragraph. Thanks MJ Jefferson-Brown.

To the paintings of Picasso, to orchids, and to daffodils no one can remain apathetic. The first, one may either like or dislike. With orchids one may perhaps feel like the atheist who went to the orchid show and came away convinced of the existence of the Devil. Like the spring they are part of, daffodils receive a universally warm welcome.

Views from the Square

2011-02-12T03:04:00.000-08:00

There's a blonde woman with two golden retrievers. Harriet and Willow are their names. I know, because she shouts at them a lot. They, meanwhile, gamble around the grass, snuffling in people's barbecues, sniffing chocolate sauce and ice cream, playing, tugging, tumbling, rolling and cajoling until a lazy sunbather or amused student holds out a piece of charcoal encrusted sausage, which, more gratefully than any human recipient, Harriet, or is it Willow, gobbles up.

Glenn Gould and that Brahms Concerto…

2011-02-10T15:19:00.000-08:00

It's not often that conductors feel it necessary to preface their performances with a disclaimer. But that's just what Leonard Bernstein did when conducting Brahms's First Piano Concerto in 1962, with the eccentric genius pianist Glenn Gould as soloist. Above is a taster of the slow, slow, slow tempos Gould chose. I've still got to hunt out a clip of a later section, which in Gould's hands seemed to turn from 19th-century turbulence turns into a 20th-century desolate wasteland.

In the meantime, here's that disclaimer:

Thought for the day

2011-02-10T00:06:00.001-08:00

Le lecteur – je veux dire le vrai lecteur – est presque toujours un ami.
(The reader – I mean the real reader – is almost always a friend.)

Marcel Pagnol in La gloire de mon pere

Hungarians and Welsh

2011-02-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

Even when you don't speak a language, it's often possible to pick up one or two words when abroad. At the very least, people often affect some sort of accent to indicate effort - who hasn't had a go at a mock Italian accent when ordering some 'bel-la pas-ta' or 'spa-ghet-ti bolo-gne-se'? Granted, tonal languages like Chinese and Japanese are going to prove more of a challenge, but in most European languages, being an English speaker means you should have at least a go at the basics of hallo-ing and goodbye-ing. Except there are a few languages that are guaranteed to flummox even the most dedicated of holiday linguists. Hungarian's one, but there's one even more close to home. Oh yes. Welsh.

Choice facts that I have learned: Welsh has two extra letters in the alphabet. But, sadly for all those Scrabble players, the high-scoring letters of j,k,q,v,x and z are taken out. Even more sadly, there are lots of double letters (which, 'Speak Welsh' helpfully advises are one single letter if you're doing a crossword. ch, dd, ff, ll, ng, ph, rh, th, Apparently it's a gendered language (masculine and feminine, which I hadn't known), and you pronounce everything that you see. Apart from when they're exceptions, which you just have to learn. But how on earth do you pronounce every letter in something as basic as 'I am' - 'Rydw i'?

But is it art? (2)

2011-02-09T00:11:00.000-08:00

What would you say if your best friend spent 200,000 francs on a piece of art that looks, to you, like a blank white canvas? (No, he shouts, it's not white. It has pale diagonal stripes on it in pale grey. Besides, it's by a famous artist.) Playwright Yasmina Reza amusingly explores the dynamic of the three friends as they tussle over this expensive artwork. It's on now at the cosy Alma Tavern pub theatre (cosy in size, although the plastic seats are less deserving of this description).

Happy Birthday Alfred Brendel!

2011-01-05T14:32:00.000-08:00

Well said

2011-01-01T05:56:00.000-08:00

"I think great art has entirely progressive aspects within it, elements that are somehow outside the detail of the text or even the political opinions of the person who made it. Art itself, if it is really great, has a progressive aspect that is needed by a society, even if it seems absolutely useless in strictly practical terms. In a way art is a little like the dreams of a society. They seem to contribute little, but sleeping and dreaming are vitally important in that a human couldn't live without them, in the same way a society cannot live without art."

Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini in The Guardian

That was 2010...

2010-12-31T11:58:00.000-08:00

As midnight starts chiming around the globe, here's a hastily flung together few lists dipping into the cultural life of 2010. They're highly subjective, not at all comprehensive and I may well scrub the lot tomorrow and start again. It's a mixture of new and old - what I've come across this year, rather than the best of what's new. It's a (blurred) snapshot rather than a scientific survey...

Top three books of 2010

- The Music Room by William Fiennes
- A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
- Zennor in Darkness by Helen Dunmore
(Solar by Ian McEwan, too, if I'm stretching to four)

Top three films of 2010

- A Single Man
- Heartbreaker
- I Am Love

Top three concerts of 2010

- Valery Gergiev and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6
- Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri in Krakow
- Maria Joao-Pires's Chopin Nocturne Prom in the Royal Albert Hall

Top three CDs of 2010
- Schumann's Davidbundlertanze and Fantasy in C from Mitsuko Uchida
- Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony from the RLPO and Vasily Petrenko
- Mozart's Piano Concertos from Imogen Cooper and the Northern Sinfonia

A Simple Medium

2010-12-28T02:14:00.000-08:00

Films, perhaps, show us who we want to be, and literature shows us who we actually are. Sitcoms, if they show us anything, show us people we might like to know.
Tom Bissell in The New Yorker, in his profile of sitcom writer Chuck Lorre

The Dragon of Kraków

2010-12-22T15:09:00.000-08:00

Meet the Kraków Dragon. A cheery fellow when he's in luminous green garb; a monstrous devourer of cattle and young virgins if you believe the legendary account. I've just finished writing a feature on his home city. This photo didn't make the final cut (well, it is a classical music travel feature), but he's found a home here – along with his scarily identical family – on Becca's Blog.

Beautiful coincidences

2010-12-19T01:56:00.000-08:00

I like coincidences. Two days ago a friend recommended to me a BBC Four documentary (‘I never thought I’d say I had a good night in watching BBC Four,’ was his selling line). ‘Beautiful Equations’ does exactly what it says – it takes a look at the role beauty plays in maths. Art critic and artist Matt Collings is an engaging presenter as he investigates Newton and Einstein, quizzes Stephen Hawking on his black hole equations and gets scientists to explain what all those squiggles and numbers are all about. (It's for the general viewer rather than those who know their electrons from their positrons.)

My favourite squiggles were those of the so-called English Einstein, a Bristol-born physicist called Paul Dirac. Working in the first half of the 20th century, and using his own symbolic language, Dirac predicated anti-matter, and was one of the founding father of quantum mechanics. The reason he appeared in this programme was his underlying belief that the pursuit of beautiful equations would reveal the laws of nature. Beauty would be, in the words of Keats, truth, truth beauty. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the 'Dirac Equation' describing wave motions of electrons.

I was intrigued, although baffled by the mathematics. Anonymity was another of Dirac's desires (he had an incredibly literal mind that made social interaction a minefield), but biographer Graham Farmelo has written an acclaimed volume on his life. Time for a quick trip to the shops. I found a copy, and headed to the counter, where a girl in a festive green sparkly dress served me. When she saw what I was buying, her face lit up. 'Dirac. He's my hero!' Slightly surprised, given that I hadn't heard his name until the day before, we got chatting. It turned out that she was a physics student and artist, hence the love of Dirac. But there was another surprise to come.

'The programme talked a lot about the beauty of his mathematics,' I added. The reply: 'Yes, I've got his equation tattooed on my arm!'

Crosby Beach

2010-11-29T14:03:00.000-08:00

Staring out to sea, one of the Gormley statues who stands vigil on Crosby Beach. Or the Gormless, as one local walker would have it.

Winter chill

2010-11-25T15:18:00.000-08:00

I like the way Sibelius is a seal, Mozart a polar bear and – best of all – Beethoven and Bach are a pair of penguins! Bound to be their real names. I'm sure of it. More on freezing conditions in Liverpool to follow... (though hopefully the conditions planned for a trip this weekend won't be quite so arctic. Polar bears in the Mersey?)

The Paragon, Bristol

2010-11-25T15:11:00.000-08:00

The Swallows of Kabul

2010-11-15T09:03:00.000-08:00

Harrowing, thought-provoking, unexpected. Kabul, as conjured up by Yasmina Khadra* is, in the words of JM Coetzee 'hell on earth, a place of hunger, tedium and stifling fear.' A slim volume, this book transports you in few, but choice, words to the Afghanistan capital under the regime of the Taliban, where women are stoned to death, hide their faces and bodies under burqhas, and in which no one is allowed to sing, smile or dance. Freedom, responsibility, fate, death and love are a few of the book's themes, explored through the relationships of two couples who lives are crumbling. Day-to-day life in this hopeless place has shrunk their expectations, dimmed an appetite for life. So the choice of a Kabul prison as one of the novel's settings is meaningful. Who are the real prisoners? Those locked up by jailers for crimes real and false, most likely sentenced to death? Or those, nominally free, who are driven to violence, words and acts that would have been anathema to their younger, freer selves? People trapped in a living hell?

*Yasmina Khadra is a pseudonym of Mohammed Moulessehoul, a former Algerian army officer now living in France. The name is that of his wife's.

Rotterdam

2010-11-09T07:45:00.000-08:00

Er, note to self. Make sure to press publish.

These photos are from Rotterdam, back in September. The Do Doelen concert hall, the Erasmus Bridge and the Cube Houses (which, I'm assured, people do actually live in).

Just Another Autumn Day

2010-11-07T23:55:00.000-08:00

In Parliament, the Minister for Mists
and Mellow Fruitfulness announces,
that owing to inflation and rising costs
there will be no Autumn next year.
September, October and November
are to be cancelled,
and the Government to bring in
the nine-month year instead.
Thus we will all live longer.

Emergency measures are to be introduced
to combat outbreaks of well-being
and feelings of elation inspired by the season.
Breathtaking sunsets will be restricted
to alternate Fridays, and gentle dusks
prohibited. Fallen leaves will be outlawed,
and persons found in possession of conkers,
imprisoned without trial.
Thus we will all work harder.

The announcement caused little reaction.
People either way don't really care
No time have they to stand and stare
Looking for work or slaving away
Just another Autumn day.

Roger McGough

Take-home message: Make the most of Autumn, kick leaves, splash in puddles, smash conkers, admire trees of every awe-inspiring hue, pause a moment to watch the magical morning mist, savour sunsets – and enjoy huddling in for long evenings, telling stories and reading poems in praise of Autumn.

Unsuitable attachments

2010-10-31T03:14:00.000-07:00

I've always had a bit of a problem with books. The best sort of problem, I'd argue. The sort that makes one incapable of walking past a secondhand bookshop without going in, that allows one to justify buying new books with the 'I'm supporting the author' argument, and that makes one borderline obsessive compulsive in the alphabetical organisation of the resulting library. I used to spend many happy hours taking all my books off the shelves, building a fortress piles of pages high, and making sure the order ran Joan Aiken to Sylvia Waugh with no hitches.

Sorting through childhood belongings recently, I discovered some notebooks in which I used to keep lists of all the books I read. I thought I might resurrect this as an occasional thread on this blog. The book, plus a best line and worst line. That sort of thing. I'll give it a whirl and see how it goes.

First up: Barbara Pym's An Unsuitable Attachment.

Set in a North London suburb, this glimpse into the suitable and not-so-suitable attachments formed by the parishioners of St Basil's is gently amusing. Will librarian Ianthe Broom marry John Challow, five years her junior? Or will the eligible anthropologist Rupert Stonebird catch her eye? Or perhaps the catty Mervyn Cantrell is most suitable suitor? It's not vintage Pym though, the characters being a little lacklustre, but well worth a read.

There's lots of lovely observation, but to continue the theme, here's part of a library scene:

Ianthe never knew how to talk to Mervyn when he was in this sort of [sour] mood. She felt she could have done better than she did with her next remark.

'Balham,' she said, thoughtful, yet desperate,' that's on the Northern Line, isn't it.'

'Yes, my dear. It's black on the Underground map, so very suitable, I always think. Picture us arriving there on Boxing Day in time for tea by public transport, of course.'

Encouragement

2010-10-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

Success is going from failure to failure with enthusiasm. Winston Churchill

Manifestations

2010-10-20T15:21:00.000-07:00

Bristol town centre. This evening, the backdrop to protests against the government spending cuts just announced. Orderly and respectful, these students and workers aired their opinions in a so terribly English manner. Meanwhile, over in France, events are more, erm, active. Lyon, where this blog started, is the scene of riots, violence and fires, making the protests there some of the most violent in the country.

The perils of secondhand books

2010-10-03T03:13:00.000-07:00

Autumn

2010-09-28T23:38:00.000-07:00

Hot water bottle weather has arrived. Yesterday a thick mist settled over Bristol. Walking in Ashton Court, one could imagine a place far more isolated... All is grey, and there's a fine spritz of rain. Illusory rain. Put out your hand and you can't feel it on your skin. But touch your hair and it's fluffing, curling, fed by a hazy damp. The view of Bristol between the trees is obscured, sound deadened. The only noises are conkers thudding on the grass as they quit the trees, and the brutal unexplained crack of twigs. Birds, all black of course, punctuate the cloud. A cyclist lurches up the hill, his flourescent yellow jacket a sudden jar on the landscape. He pants by and is subsumed by the gloom as soon as he appeared.

Language thoughts

2010-09-09T14:42:00.000-07:00

The human mind's a funny old thing. Particularly when it comes to words and language. How can you be a different person in one language than another? I'm not sure, and it's probably overstating the case to say you become completely different, but I think you do find out other parts of yourself in another language. Even if you aren't fluent, you find unexpected turns of phrase that perfectly encapsulate an idea, a word that fascinates. Different parts of your character are drawn out. I read an article recently that suggested not learning another language is denying what it is to be human. Why should your life be defined by the first language you happened to speak? Sadly I've a long way to go before mastering French - ho-hum - and often feel put to shame by the multi-lingual talents of others, but still the sense of finding a part of yourself in another language is tantalising.

I've found a little corner of France in Bristol in the form of a French meet-up group. In the quasi-French surroundings of Café Rouge, sipping admittedly overpriced red wine, we started to chat about who dreams in what language. I remember proudly, and excitedly, noting in my diary the first time I had a dream in French when I was living there - it felt like some kind of milestone to Being French. Of course, English still won out, and once back in the UK all ze lovely French words faded. One French girl at the group, though, said she never had dialogues in her dreams, they were all very visual, so could happen in any language. The human mind - an intriguing thing.

19th-century Facebooks

2010-09-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

Facebook's sticky tendrils have extended themselves around the globe in the past five years, enmeshing people in its web of photos, status updates, 'likes' and tags. But behind it all is a human desire to be remembered by others that's nothing new, especially if the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) exhibition of photographer Camille Silvy is any sort of evidence. The 19th-century Frenchman came up with all sorts of technical innovations in the field of photography - exposing several negatives onto one film to get London in twilight, fog and bright sun - but I found his day books most immediately fascinating. The NPG owns twelve of them, chronicling every sitter that came into his Bayswater studio. His subjects who ranged from actors to aristocracy were all caught up in the rage for cartes de visites - small photo calling cards that people handed around, collecting friends. The craze swept the UK. Meet someone? Hand them a card picturing yourself. Sound familiar?

Three cartes de visites of, respectively, Adeline Patti as Lucie from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, fellow Adeline, the actress Adeline Cottrell and fellow opera singer Caroline Marie Carvalho-Miolan.

By night...

2010-09-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

... Clifton Suspension Bridge...

Mumbling on

2010-08-16T12:06:00.001-07:00

Though of course, the Bristol Balloon Fiesta wasn't the place to be seen in 2010. Mumbles, Swansea was the hub of excitement this August weekend, with teams of intrepid, fancy-dressed Mumblers taking to the water for the annual raft race. After watching the homemade constructions jostle for a place on the startline for five minutes, and with a good 15 more to go before the race began, I left them bobbing merrily in Swansea Bay, budding Columbos ready to take on the lengthy paddle to Knab Rock. Who won? Who knows.

Sky drift

2010-08-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

Balloons, hot air balloons. Drifting gently over Bristol on the breeze. Colour was so 2009; this year it's all about sepia.

Good penguin fact

2010-08-07T15:15:00.001-07:00

... (of which you can never have too many, might I add) ...

Six-foot penguins used to live in Antarctica. Not really the icy continent that we'd recognise, though. Back then, say 50 million years ago, it had a sub-tropical climate; as it cooled, the penguins got smaller. I'm sure that's the scientific explanation. Definitely. It's a fact.

These girls are in haste!

2010-08-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

Royal Albert Hall. Between the early evening and late night Prom two friends sit in bar giggling over sandwiches and orange juice.

'What's the time?'
One checks phone. Replies.
'Oh. Oh dear. The Prom starts in six minutes. And we need to pick up the tickets.'
Action. Both get up, scoop up bags. Start to run. Through bar, up stairs. Up more stairs again. Which way is best? They're at door 6, the tickets are at door 12. Through door into inner corridor. Keep running. Halfway round the Royal Albert Hall. Arrive at door 12. Pull door handle. It's locked. Gesticulate frantically at steward in oh-so-smart red coat. Unlocked. 'Where are you going?' 'Tickets!' 'Well, go go.' Run to box office desk. The foyer is deserted. Hurry out name. Tickets. Two programmes. Check. 'It's door 3'. 'Door 3, where is door 3?' 'That way.' Run back to first steward. Hand over tickets. Other door... he points. Then runs with them to next steward, who has to scan the barcodes on the tickets, a la Sainsbury's. 'Hurry up, these girls are in haste!' Said girls crack up laughing. 'Don't laugh, the worst is to come!' Oh no? Where are our seats? The other side? He's just kidding. Unable to speak for laughter – 'these girls are in haste' – they arrive at the door which isn't so far away after all and are let through the red velvet curtain into the inner sanctum, ready for the concert.

Sunrise and skeletons

2010-07-13T23:49:00.001-07:00

More Brendel this weekend, this time courtesy of the Cheltenham Music Festival. Possibly my favourite moment from the pianist's fascinating lecture-recital exploring character in Beethoven's piano sonatas came when he turned to the Waldstein Sonata. The piece is also known in French as 'L'aurore', meaning the dawn. One misguided German critic, Brendel recounted, misheard this nickname, calling it instead 'L'horror'. Cue Brendel's performance of the opening, with its pp repeated C major quavers, with his teeth bared, chattering in time with the repetitions like a clanky skeleton.

Here's Brendel playing the third movement of the Waldstein (I couldn't find the first, or the skeleton impression, I'm afraid).

Alfred Brendel

2010-06-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

After a weekend spent in Plush, Dorset, to write about a festival set up by pianist Alfred Brendel's children, I've been having a bit of a Brendel moment.

Here's the master with Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major, Op. 90 No. 3.

A concert of sylphs or elves

2010-06-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

French composer Erik Satie once wrote a piece called Vexations, in which it's suggested to the pianist that the theme might be played 840 times. Somehow that title hung over me as I headed to Bath for Joanna MacGregor's Chopin Mazurka-fest.

OK, time-wise, performing all 58 Chopin Mazurkas isn't such a herculean task, fitting into, ehem, a mere three hours. Performing them's one thing; how about listening to them? Surely wall-to-wall Polish-folk-dance-inspired piano miniatures on a Sunday morning would be too much of a good thing? Even, dare I suggest it, a bit boring? Coffee was needed.

Caffeine consumed, the Chopin-listening began. In an unbroken flow, with no room for applause, Joanna MacGregor launched into this consuming musical world. As her programme jottings noted, the pieces range from 'wittily joyful', to 'plangently melancholic', 'robustly merry' to 'wistfully delicate'. Played in chronological order, what was most telling was that, once Chopin had got over the initial teething period in this form, they were remarkably stylistically homogenous. Not much of a journey, but the whole was a refreshing experience.

Over to Berlioz: 'There are unbelievable details in his Mazurkas; and he has found how to render them doubly interesting by playing them with the utmost degree of softness, piano in the extreme, the hammers merely brushing the strings, so much so that one is tempted to go close to the instrument and put one's ear to it as if to a concert of sylphs or elves'

Canonic Chopin

2010-06-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

'If the mighty autocrat of the north knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in the simple tunes of Chopin's mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin's works are canons buried in flowers.' Robert Schumann

Off to hear the complete Chopin mazurkas in Bath – all 58 over three hours. Heaven or hell? I'll let you know later on…

A is for Arditti, B is for Beethoven…

2010-05-31T10:39:00.000-07:00

… and C is for catastrophe.

Oh dear. The Arditti Quartet did not come through triumphant with its recent performance of Beethoven's Grosse Fugue at the Bath Music Festival. The scrappy first note set the tone; the poor ensemble and tuning scuppered the piece. So much for hearing a performance bringing out the modernity of Beethoven's testing, puzzling string masterpiece. This just brought out the under-rehearsal. Seemed they'd saved their bowing hours for the Birtwistle, Dausapin and Schnittke that followed.

Bristol by boat

2010-05-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

Gender equality

2010-05-26T23:31:00.000-07:00

French fact. (Best look away now unless you like details about grammar.) As you probably know, French has masculine and feminine nouns. You have to make all your adjectives (and for other reasons sometimes your verb endings) agree in order to create sentences with harmony of the sexes. There is rhyme and reason to how you go about doing this, but not always. Why, for example, do you write 'la petite fille' for granddaughter, with an 'e' added to 'petit' to make everything agree, but do you leave 'la grand mere' without an 'e'? In fact, grande-mere means 'tall mother' not grandmother. Turns out 'grandmere' is a verbal relic, a hangover from the candlelit days of medieval French, when words stuck close to their Latin ancestors. And in Latin there was a group of adjectives (in the third declension if you must know) that don't make all the genders match up. Grand's great-great-great-[repeat as necessary] grandmother's etymological ancestor came from this set of nonconformist adjectives. So there you go. Spread the word. Go on, do.

Conundrum

2010-05-17T00:57:00.000-07:00

Oh Beethoven. A crescendo through a tied note on the piano? How am I meant to play that?

Vincent in London

2010-05-16T23:56:00.000-07:00

Vincent Van Gogh. Something of a magical charm, those three words, judging from the hordes at the latest exhibition of his work in London. It's ended now; I just managed to sneak in on the penultimate day. Thick skin and pointy elbows were needed, and tactics, especially if you're impatient (like me) and believe the worst way to look at a picture is as one of a four-deep crowd (guilty again). A quick scout round, and then I made a beeline for the three or four paintings that stood out for some reason. Here's the first, one of my favourites. Fishing boats at sea has a Japanese flavour that becomes even more apparent in the four ink versions he drew for friends. Face to face with this tableaux, the sea looks wild, the wind strains in the sails. 'The Mediterranean sea is a mackerel colour: in other words, changeable,' wrote Van Gogh, 'You do not always know whether it is green or purple, you do not always know if it is blue, as the next moment the ever-changing sheen has assumed a pink or a gray tint.’

New recipe

2010-05-12T23:59:00.001-07:00

So, we've got Cameron flapjack combined with Clegg carrot cake. I've never tasted a carrot flapjack. Have you?

Winning an election? It's a piece of cake

2010-04-23T00:09:00.000-07:00

... and we made The Times! With a group of friends, at Bristol's Tobacco Factory last night, watching the General Election debate, I realised (as did everyone else) that we'd been infiltrated by reporters and photographers. My clue? A card handed round saying 'Guys, I'm from The Times, if you mind me taking a photo of you, put your hands up now'. Not exactly Sherlock Holmes stuff. The Bristol Evening Post was there too.

Martin Fletcher of The Times tapped away at his laptop throughout the debate, looking up whenever a cheer or laugh burst forth, smiling when the newspaper-sponsored cakes – carrot cake Clegg, Gordon Brownies and Cameron flapjacks – were passed round (all the carrot cake had gone by the time it got to our corner. Shame), and rushing to the front of the room to do a straw poll at the end of the debate. Little did he know that some of the laughs related to leadership bingo – three cards with the words most likely to pop out of the contenders' mouths. My team got all of our phrases – no problem with 'hardworking families', 'deficit', 'billions' – apart from 'a future fair for all', surprisingly hard to come by.

Enjoy Martin Fletcher's words here:

Never mind the opinion polls. The customers in the café-bar at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory had no doubt who the tastiest candidate was in last night’s debate: Nick Clegg.

Asked to make their choice based on the leaders’ performances, ten of them selected a piece of the café-bar’s carrot cake bearing Mr Clegg’s picture. Four opted for a “Gordon Brownie”, and only one chose a ginger and orange flapjack adorned with David Cameron’s likeness.

This thoroughly unscientific survey, generously sponsored by The Times, marked a significant swing to the Liberal Democrats. Before the debate the café-bar had sold seven Gordon Brownies, four Tory flapjacks and only two Lib-Dem carrot cakes.

“It’s obviously Nick Clegg,” said Anna Barclay, 30, a photographer, when asked who she thought had won. “He comes across so well on telly. He’s a natural.”

“Clegg was the most reasonable and credible,” agreed Charles Mitton, 34, a Mencap trainer. “Brown didn’t do too badly, but Cameron seemed to be trying to get out a lot of party slogans. I just thought he was bland.”

Just across the Avon from the studio, the Tobacco Factory seemed as good a place as any from which to watch the politicians spar. Imperial Tobacco used to manufacture cigarettes in the huge old red-brick building. It now contains a theatre, restaurant, studios and small businesses. No chains are allowed — even the bar spurns big-name beers in favour of a local micro-brewery. Its watchword is independence, albeit of an arty, alternative, leftish sort. As Shakespeare’s The Tempest played in the theatre upstairs, customers packed into the room below to watch — intently — the political drama unfold.

Unlike the studio audience, they could make their views clear — laughing when Mr Clegg accused the Tories of joining a bunch of “nutters” in the European Peoples Party, cheering when a questioner asked about sustainable transport, snorting when Mr Brown cited his use of trains to campaign to underscore his green credentials.

“Yeah,” someone shouted when Mr Brown urged less dependence on oil. They nodded their heads in approval as Mr Clegg suggested that British support for America should be more critical. They “oooh-ed” sarcastically as Mr Cameron denounced Labour “lies”.

This was the first time that the café-bar had advertised a political debate on its pavement blackboard, rather than Six Nations rugby or Wimbledon. It proved just as gripping. Not a person left before the end.

Mr Clegg did not have it all his own way, however. Paul Anning, 38, a project manager with a bank, backed the Prime Minister. “I think Gordon Brown is more believable and has depth to his answers because he’s been at the front end of it,” he said. “I think Cameron has no substance. He’s just trying to grab headlines. There’s no meat on his bone.”

Wendy Brandl, 65, a retired therapist previously leaning towards the Liberal Democrats, thought that there was no clear-cut winner, just an obvious loser: Mr Cameron.

The debate over, The Times did a rather more scientific straw poll. Mr Clegg got 21 votes, Mr Brown five, Mr Cameron three. For the Lib-Dem leader it was a piece of cake.

General Election debate in Bristol!

2010-04-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

Clegg, Cameron and Brown are heading to Bristol. The Arnolfini, to be precise, home of contemporary art. Last time I was there, I saw a man icing a chair, another going up and down the stairs – two steps forward, one step back, a shoe connected to a fan representing the artist's travels in India, and a box of popcorn, on top of a table, hiding a hand... Pictures are below, for proof. Will the political trio make anymore sense? Let's hope so! Oh, and the General Election debate is definitely happening there tomorrow, although when I wandered over there at lunchtime today, a charming Sky security guy wouldn't tell me whereabouts in the gallery exactly. No TV screens to broadcast it either; but, he assured me, there'll be a stunning illumination of the Arnolfini tonight.

Thought

2010-04-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
St. Augustine of Hippo

Found!

2010-03-29T14:52:00.001-07:00

When I started my job two and half years ago, I inherited a desk, a few folders of assorted papers, a couple of biros, an opera trivia quiz book and the remains of an iTunes music collection. Dipping in and out of the tracks revealed a few horrors and a few gems. One of my favourite finds was a short song, beautiful and hypnotic. All I had to identify it was the composer: Monteverdi. Since then I've played it to everyone at work in an attempt to pin it down, listened to Monteverdi CDs, but, alack, no luck. I didn't know who was singing it, who was accompanying, what it was called. Until today. Success! Found while hunting for something completely different – details of an intriguing concert in the Wieliczka salt mine near the city of Krakow, Poland, performed by the early music ensemble L'Arpeggiata and countertenor Phillippe Jaroussky. It's a programme of Monteverdi, they've already recorded it as a CD and it includes my song!!!! And, more on this to follow, I'm off to Poland for a few days tomorrow and will hear it live. It's not the same performance as on my computer, it's better. Here it is:

Cooling down in Antarctica

2010-03-23T01:37:00.000-07:00

What would you do in Antarctica? Herbert Ponting, who made it near the end of the world as part of Scott's 1910 Antarctic Expedition, decided to cool his head (his words, not mine). Because, clearly, it gets pretty hot at the South Pole.

Sweet dreams

2010-03-11T11:13:00.000-08:00

Illness. In the middle of the night, awake. The rest of the world slumbers. I put on the radio. Music. Sleep. A melody dives through the layers of dreams, casting its hook and bringing me back to the surface. Piano, strings. A solo violin. Restless melancholy, hints of repose. What was this music, at once familiar in feel and unknown in note? In the morning, with the curtains open, the light on and the memory now hours old, I tracked down those elusive sounds. Chausson's Concert for Piano, Violin and String Quartet, the second movement - a Sicilienne.

Around the world

2010-03-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

The West has had a dose of the international recently. Sex-and-the-City actress Kim Catrall and one-time Mr Darcy Matthew Macfayden brought bubble and fizz to Noel Coward's Private Lives over in Bath – you can now see the classic whirl of love, coincidence and mishaps on stage in the Vaudeville Theatre in London, where it's getting pretty top-notch reviews. The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, joined by fellow writer Greg Milner, entertained an audience at St George's with a conversation about the history of recorded music - what exactly is a recording, and what do we think it should be? Ross followed up his Bristol appearance with a stint at the Wigmore Hall in London, where he delivered a talk about the future of the classical concert. That's an oh-so-lovely link to the third international figure being welcomed to the West: tomorrow night American composer John Adams will be conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Britten, Sibelius and his Dr Atomic Symphony, and one of the first handful of European performances of his 2009 City Noir. This 30-minute piece ends thus, in Adams's words. 'The music should have the slightly disorienting effect of a very crowded boulevard peopled with strange characters, like those of a David Lynch film—the kind who only come out very late on a very hot night.'

Is it art?

2010-03-04T00:08:00.000-08:00

There's a darkened doorway in the Barbican that has the metal equivalent of a beaded curtain hanging across it. Intrigued? Behind the curtain there's a dark tunnel. Odd. In the tunnel is a wooden walkway, edged with stones and plants. You can hear the sounds of crickets. Curiouser and curiouser. I follow the path. At the other end, you emerge into a light-filled, cavernous room. And here's the strangest part, it's a space filled with Gibson guitars, cymbals and... zebra finches. These cute little birds, with tiny orange beaks, and looking (sorry for the cliche) as light as a feather are going about their daily lives, every peck of bird seed, flutter of wings or sideways hop transformed into sound by the instruments. The brainchild of Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, this installation creates an ever-changing soundscape. It might be random sound – though motifs emerge from the hubub – but composers from Vaughan Williams to Messiaen have been inspired by birdsong. Is it art? I don't know. It's certainly unexpectedly uplifting.

King of the pavement

2010-02-19T00:15:00.001-08:00

Snow flakes twice the size of stamps followed by rain. Yesterday was the kind of day that made you want to own one of those huge anti-social umbrellas. You know, the ones that make you king of the pavement, a crusader with an umbrella-shaped shield, the power to repel the rain. The drops are kept at bay, falling so far on the other side of the umbrella that you can imagine you're inside. People have to chart their course along the pavement around you as you sail along in a smug bubble of dry. Selfish, I know, the Umbrella Dream.

Learning curve

2010-02-10T00:38:00.001-08:00

Back from skiing. What did I learn? Skiing is like riding a bike, except if you haven't done it for years you will first fall down a mountain into an undignified snowy heap with back-to-front legs before you remember how to do it. Walkie talkies to communicate between groups of skiers may well use the same radio channel as (a) the resort funicular (bet they're missing Funicular FM now!) and (b) the ski-lift operators (cue random French noises). Donkeys can live up mountains. Mulled wine made with rum and energy tablets is a good drink. Button lifts have a life of their own and will hoik you up into the air and throw you back down. Raclette and fondue can induce cheese mania. Ski boots are never your friend. The second-fastest six-seater chairlift in France - an obscure accolade if I ever saw one - is in Isola2000, near Nice. That high up, you can blame anything on the altitude. Walking is hard work after a week strapped to skis.

Handel from Racha Arodaky

2010-01-27T14:31:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite pianists at the moment. There's a certain fragility within her sound that's ineffable, a purity that's rare and leaves you wanting to hear more. So to follow Handel, here's another video: the sound quality isn't top-notch (blame YouTube) but this recording made me see that Scarlatti's piano pieces have their own magical beauty; previously I had written them off. Unfairly, it's probably true, as I can't claim to have listened to all 666 of his piano sonatas... that's a project for a rainy day or two.