A Lesson in Flamenco

I am the only student here - gracias a Dios - for a two-hour lesson in the dance school in Alhendín, a village near Granada.

In the vestibule, black skirts with large red spots, swirling hemlines and frills down their sideseams hang on pegs.  I choose the only one that fits - an offering made of unexciting brown stretchy material that greatly enhances the line of the figure.  Or, put another way, the one with the same fabric used for Spanx control underwear.  Very quickly, my skirt is required to do sterling work.

I must also choose a pair of Flamenco shoes, but like the skirts, the footwear has been accustomed to more dainty dancers.  The largest pair, size 39, are just the wrong side of comfortable, and my feet soon begin to feel emprisoned.

My teacher, Paquita, is a very beautiful young woman who moves with great ease and sensuous grace.  When she tells me she is actually 48 years old, I decide to pay very close attention.  We stand in front of a mirror, with arms straight, shoulders back, stomach and bottom pulled in.  Her fingers reach up to the skies, inviting energy to run down her entire body.  She brings her arms behind the line of her ears, then stretches them out behind her arched back, to show the proud, arrogant position needed in this dance.

We begin by clapping in time to the music, introduce arm movements with wrists moving sinously.  Then we work on the feet, using the heel (tacon) the middle of the foot (media) and the full sole (golpe) to create not just different movements but the tapping sound which acts as accentuation to the music.

"Más chulo, Katie," says Paquita, which means, I assume from her gestures, more attitude.  She is being charitable, for as I gallump alongside her it is not just chulo that is wanting.  I am severely anatomically-challenged, with shoulders that have stiffened and an extra foot that has arrived out of nowhere.

She, meanwhile, whirls and flows and lunges and struts.  She lifts her skirts above her knees, her legs shapely and brown, and taps her shoes ever more furiously in a living example of confidence, sensuality and femininity.

During one of our necessary breaks, she tells me that there are numerous different palos, or Flamenco styles, depending on where the dances have originated and what rhythm or mood is being created.  Classical dance requires the arms to be straight and long, the back to be arched, and the movements to be precise.  Many dancers perfect their techniques over years of training.  She herself actually only began five years ago.  I find this revelation inordinately encouraging, as much as the information that very young dancers will not often have sufficent duende (soul) to convey the depth of emotion required.

"And it is also possible to use your own ideas and movements in Flamenco," she tells me.

Good.  These, then, are the ones I shall be developing within the dark yet safe confines of my own living room.

A Labour of Love

Somewhere – it could be in France, it could even be in Burgundy – there is an old town with a wonderful square containing a covered market and half-timbered houses.

And in the square sits an inviting tearoom, advertising on its sign a selection of teas, brunch and lunch. 

But when you get there - although it is a Saturday, a light is on and someone appears to be moving about inside - the tea shop is closed.  

You are persistent.  You rap on the window.

A slim woman comes to the door to say that the establishment is not open.  But you insist, charmingly of course, that you have travelled all this way especially, and all you want is a cup of her famous tea, oh please, is it not possible?

And you enter the room with its comfy chairs and sofas overlaid with throws and the odd teddy bear or two, with knick-knacks and curios in the corners, and while savouring the view over the marketplace you pour tea from teapots large enough to provide each individual with six cups. 

You visit the loo, leaf through one of the many antique books you’ve taken down from the shelf, try on several of the hats from the old-fashioned hat-stand.  By the time you’ve re-emerged, your hostess has carried out a delicious-looking fruit pie.  “It’s just from the oven,” she announces.

And you think, if this tearoom is not open, who exactly is this pie for?  And you ask her, and she answers that she is cooking for a party of fifteen people here this evening.

Oh, you say, dumbly.  Does she actually open in the evening? 

Bien sûr, she says, though you scratch your head at the thought of the sign outside that loudly proclaims tea but makes no mention of dinner.  So could we come here for dinner on Monday, you ask.  Of course, she says, but you must tell her now which meat you would prefer, souris d’agneau (lamb shank) or coquelet (chicken). 

And you indeed arrive on Monday, to find the place transformed into an enchanting candlelit room, your table laid with a centrepiece of ceramic rabbit propped on an old leather-bound book entitled Les Voyages, each place set with a napkin held together by a clothespeg, each knife resting on a small comma-shaped aubergine.  And after your mouth-watering lamb and chicken, and your course of local cheeses, you head to the dessert table to help yourself too liberally to the clafoutis, berry pie, chocolate cake and compote of dried fruit so laced with booze that she calls it her bombe atomique.

And you learn that this cook extraordinaire with her refined and caring manner does this all on her own, that she moved here from Paris some three years ago having fallen in love with the town and the premises she now occupies with the view across the square.  You sense that this is her raison d’être, her passion, that she does not need to publicise her dinners, that clients simply find her in much this way: they want a cup of tea, they see a light, they tap on the window…

How Did That Get There?

Today I happened to be looking down the list of Word documents on my computer, and I came across this title:

How Successfully Did Pitt Face the Challenge of the French Revolution from 1789-1801?

There it was, sandwiched between Hits of the 60s. doc and How to Read an Unseen Poem and Compare it to One in Your Booklet. doc – both unmistakeably work  of my own hand.

Now, I haven’t written a history essay for (loud cough)-ty years or so.   So exactly how Mr Pitt got in amongst my personal effects is unclear. 

I feel it important to point out to my future executors, should I ever go under a bus and should they ever need to comb nostagically through my written remnants, that this blip of erudition has not been penned by me.  Never in my life have I ever considered the agonisings of the British Prime Minister at the turn of the 18^th century as he stared, possibly bleakly, into the shockwaves of the French Revolution. 

But looking at that Pitt document, standing as a proud bastion of oddity among all the other titles, gave me the same feeling I had back in June when I was examining my daughter’s cycle route through the Pyrenees.  According to the map, near the French town of Bourg-Madame  her route took her past  Spain on one side - yes there was the border clearly marked,  and………..Spain on the other.  I blinked.  I looked again.  How on earth could that be?




It turns out that there is a little corner of France that is forever Spain.  Llívia, some 12.84 square kilometres with a population of 1,665 (data from 2011), is a tiny island of Spain smack bang in French territory.   Connected to its mother country across some two kilometres of road, the D68, Llívia is part of the area known as Cerdanya (Cerdagne in France).  In 1659 the Treaty of the Pyrenees established the borders between France and Spain.  Some 33 villages of Cerdanya had to be given up to France, but the town of Llívia managed to escape by dint of a loophole – the treaty stipulated that only villages were to be ceded to the northern neighbour. 

And so, as it is completely surrounded by France, Llívia is technically an enclave within France, or an exclave of Spain. 

Just as the Mr Pitt essay could be considered an enclave within my computer documents, but an exclave of what may be a copious output of essays gone astray from an A-level syllabus, possibly my son’s, possibly a scribing elf’s.  It will be there forever unless I exert jurisdiction over it, and delete it from my files. 

Which I choose not to do, because I like its quirky presence. 

So how did Pitt face that pesky challenge of the French Revolution?  Well, the conclusion of the exclave essay tells me that  “it is possible to argue that Pitt overreacted somewhat”.

Cycle Mad

Last Wednesday afternoon, I stood with my humble bicycle at Hampton Court Bridge at the finishing line for the men cyclists’ Olympic Time Trial, and could not help but think of American President John Kennedy’s words when he addressed the citizens of Berlin in 1963. His purpose was to show solidarity, to indicate that he understood the current circumstances in that city by asserting that he too was a Berliner. 

And as flags waved, cheers arose and the crowd at Hampton Court went bananas when the sideburned hero, British cyclist Bradley Wiggins, came in first place to receive the gold medal, I also wanted to express fellowship in the moment.  I wanted to state that I too was part of a fraternity, the two-wheeled one surrounding me, with a vehement: ich bin ein Radfahrer.

But in the absence of anything resembling the megaphone required for such a declaration, I headed instead for a celebratory cappuccino at a café facing the gift shop Bradley + Brown  which, for the occasion, had changed its name to Bradley + Wiggins.

“What a great result for Wiggo,” said one of a group of three cyclists who joined my table.  Of course, we agreed, things hadn’t quite gone Wiggo’s way – nor for Mark Cavendish, nor any of the British team - in the previous Saturday’s road race.  We scratched our heads in bewilderment at how our sporting greats had on that day seemingly fallen foul of two cycling truths: one, that a peloton is a cosy and sociable hangout, but a place to pedal hell-for-leather out of if you want to make your mark.  And, two, that not only should you sweet-talk your own team-mates in order to decide which of you has the best chance of victory, but you also have to get to work in the locker-room beforehand, distributing devastatingly yummy gels and energy bars to your competitors.  Only then might any of them be persuaded to take the strain in turn, by cycling at the head so that you can, for a while, tuck comfortably into their slipstream. The Brits last Saturday had got themselves snagged at the front of the peloton, a mistake avoided by the women the next day when Lizzie Armitstead romped home to a silver. 

Even before my tablemates had sat down with me to share such insider information, I could tell they were serious cyclists – not just because of the hungry and over-exercised look, not just because of the body-clenching clobber they were wearing, but because they knew these routes like the back of their hand.  This was their patch, they said, here, round Hampton Court, and out to the Surrey Hills - an Area of Oustanding Natural Beauty (note the capital letters), which always comes as a surprise to any visitor who thinks that London sprawls unchecked until it hits the English Channel.  But an Area, apparently, with more than its allocated share of bicycle-chewing motorists who are inclined to stick heads out of windows of four-by-fours and shout: “So who pays road tax, then?”

It’s not the kind of reception that the current crop of international competitors had been receiving.  As they flew past, all cyclists were loudly cheered.  Indeed, anything on wheels was cheered.  Support vehicles.  Cameramen on motorbikes.  White vans containing members of the press.  Policemen on motorbikes who did high fives with spectators or posed with hands on hips to whip up the throng. 

And even me, on my way back along the Thames path from Hampton Court.

Riding into the teeth of the same warm wind that had kept blowing the uneaten half of my blueberry muffin on to the ground back at the café, I wove through prams, children on scooters, entire shoals of cycling families.  Ich bin ein Radfahrer I kept reminding myself.  Suddenly, up ahead, two young energetic cyclists were in my sights.  “Go on!” cried a smiling woman who stepped back into the bushes as I passed her.  “You can beat them!”

...and I'll Sing Once More...

Songs to sing through the weathers, the harvests, the feastdays.  Through joys and sorrows, through births and burials.  Songs to sing to fretful children.  Songs that show you sympathise with your tired oxen.   

It was because I wanted to learn such songs that I found myself this time last year in the Svaneti region in the far north of the republic of Georgia in a village within sight of the imposing two-horned Mount Ushba.   

Criss-crossed by footpaths shared by inhabitants and docile livestock, the village – Lakhushdi – was a small collection of houses that were simply furnished but often large and spacious.  Many had wooden balconies that opened out to a breathtaking view of fields and mountains.   

We were a group of twenty-five billetted in the homes of five different families who had never before welcomed a group such as ours.  In our honour, they had hastened to install indoor showers and plumbing, although we had been prepared to accept conditions as they were.  Irene from Edinburgh and I shared an enormous room with wood panelling (that I almost set fire to when I was inattentive to the electric wiring) in the Chamgeliani household, which served as headquarters for our visit.  

Breakfast 

Each morning we sat at breakfast tables spread with mouth-watering home-made produce: yogurt, butter and cheese not long from the cow.  Bread fresh from the wood stove.  Jam from cherries or plums picked from the trees.  Honey from bees that had gorged on wild flowers just down the road.  Newly laid eggs.  Red fruit compotes, plates of tomatoes, cucumbers and watermelon.  Moist nutty cake.  Tangy cherry juice.  And even chacha, the local vodka, that woke up voice and soul. 

Each evening, we convened for a supra, a special feast in which traditional Georgian toasts are proposed to guests.  Time and again, Murtaz Chamgeliani stood and raised his glass to us, to our countries, our families, our ancestors - each toast deepening in its embrace so that in the end I truly believed my heart could be spirited out of its ribcage never to return home.

Murad and djangi

One of the main reasons for our visit was to learn songs and round dances so that we could take part in the Feast of Limkheri on top of the nearby Tinghali Hill.  Our three teachers - Murad, Gigo and Givi - their faces ruddy from mountain air, their throat muscles prominent and strong, took us phrase by phrase through the songs written phonetically on our songsheets.  They painstakingly separated out vocal parts that they had always known only as an organic blend of sound, and sang with subtle shifts in tone counter-intuitive to the western ear.  Sometimes we were accompanied by traditional instruments, the carved-wood djangi, or the chuniri played by Ana Chamgeliani as she taught us cradle songs.  It required intense concentration and in this we were aided by the gifted singer Nana Mzhavanadze, who acted as a kind of musical bridge. 

  

Wild flowers

But it wasn’t all about the singing. There was also time to stroll down to the river to pan for gold, to walk with Madona at sunrise in a meadow dotted with blue, pink and yellow bloom.  To learn from Mzia how to bake tch’vistari bread sandwiched between walnut leaves.  To teach She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain to little Demetre and his brother Erekle, who both preferred a lusty ay yay yoopee to the standard ay yay yippee.  What did it matter at those moments when our translator, Irina, wasn’t at hand and we faltered in our attempts to tell a joke or ask a question in Georgian, or to explain to a village elder the purpose of the International Date Line drawn on the inflatable globe she was holding?   The affection and acceptance shown to us was transcending.

Tch'vistari

Kvirokoba

Emboldened by our efforts at the Feast of Limkheri, we seized the opportunity to travel deeper into the Caucasus to celebrate the festival of Kvirikoba.  In unforgiving heat, we climbed a hill to the stone shrine where pencil-thin candles dribbled down the walls.  There, at the summit, we joined hands with each other and with strangers, sang and danced with gusto, me holding on firmly to our teacher Murad as much for his pitching as for his assured steps.   

As we sat down on the grass, hot, tired but pleased with our efforts, a man approached Kaxa Chamgeliani, who for that day was co-driver on our minibus.  “I didn’t realise that the people with you were foreigners,” he said.  “At first I thought that they were all from Lakhushdi.” 

“They are from Lakhushdi,” answered Kaxa.

As I write this post, another group - some returners from last year - are nearing the end of their stay at the very same village, on a holiday organised by the indefatigable Madge Bray.  You can check out what it's all about here: Braveheart Georgia 


This is a film about last year's Feast of Limkheri made by Mike Spring:

Demetre

Get Your Fingers Round This

Have been trying to get to grips with a guitar chord.  It’s pictured above, symbolised by the three big dots, and features in a song by KT Tunstall called Heal Over.

Now, it may look easy.  But having recently been afflicted in my left hand with something I’ve decided to call Sheepshearer’s Fingers, I can tell you it’s quite a stretch.

Here’s how you do it.  (Seasoned guitar players may wish to rejoin us in paragraph seven.)  Breathe in.  Put your fourth finger on the 9th fret of the fifth string.  Put your index finger on the 6^th fret of the fourth string.  Breathe out.  Then put your fifth finger on the 9^th fret of the third string.   Rest for a moment, sip some water, and savour the view from here.  Now play the chord, just to make sure the index finger hasn’t got bored and slid off sideways, and voilà.  An E add 9 chord.

Or is it?

Well, the jury appears to be out.  In checking that font of knowledge, You Tube, one guitar teacher states that this is a C add 2 chord.  Another says it’s an E diminished. 

So what’s a confused girl to do other than go to theguitarbuzz.com.  There you can plop your notes down on the diagram of strings and it will tell you, visually and aurally, what chord you are playing.  Result.  It’s an E add 9 . 

So far so intriguing with the first chord of the song.  There’s further disagreement on You Tube over the third chord.  One expert claims that it is a simple B.   It’s not a simple B in the original version! I want to shout.  There’s something else going on! 

In fact, the theme there’s something else going on has all too frequently raised its ugly head.  I used to own a book of Beatles songs that were spookily easy - because they were just a tad wrong.  Most of the chords had been simplified to plain C, or common-or-garden G: the musical equivalent of being forbidden from using anything in your palette other than primary colours.  Which can certainly be exciting territory, until the illicit discovery of flatted fifths, augmented 6ths and add 9s.   These are the stray notes, the guesting notes, the tone-mixing notes.  The notes  that have driven up in a limo, elbowed their way through security, helped themselves liberally to nibbles and sour cream dips, and now are stubbing out their cigarettes on the carpet.  

The notes that have come with the express purpose of slapping that plain old chord around.   

Bad Smells in the Stairwell

There’s something quietly rotting in the fridge today – and suddenly my mind is transported back to the college where I used to work.

I’m not suggesting that the illustrious establishment which once gave me employment smelt anything other than pleasant, most of the time.  Indeed, so heavenly were the aromas emanating from the catering department as students baked doughnuts, breads and Danish pastries that it was pure torture to wander anywhere in the vicinity on an empty stomach.  And even the tang of fresh-paint and sweat hanging about the new Sports Hall, coupled with the peppery scent of overwork pervading the staffroom, formed a familiar and welcoming backdrop.

But there was that one autumn of the weird stench in the principal’s stairwell.  The stairwell in question was a critical entrance for the tutors in my department.  It provided an essential shortcut on mornings when the A3 had meted out horrible vengeance on drivers, and left teachers with one minute spare to race to their desks, rummage for a lesson plan and take thirty copies of textual material from the moody photocopier.

But it was also lethally steep, each step rising from the next at a dizzying gradient, each tread not much wider than a goat’s hoof. 

And thus began the suspicions and murmurings.  How exactly to explain the nasty whiff that offended your nostrils on the lower steps?  At first it was hard to define but, if you stuck with it, there was the unmistakable pong of Munster cheese with hints of festering cabbage.  Then coming through were clear tones of railway-station urinal.  And finally an unmissable top note of decomposing meat.  Who had sprinted too unathletically up the stairs or, more probably, had miscalculated the treads while making a bid for escape at the end of the teaching day?  Who had got buried under paperwork, forgotten the time and got locked in?  Who had camped - hungrily, thirstily and finally fatally - on the bottom step during the long vacation?

The stairwell, worthy of assault course training, is still there, though I’m told the smell is gone…

…which thought leaves me no recourse but to break from these musings and take swift remedial action on the contents of the fridge before the health inspectors come calling.

Irregularity - Where Do You Stand?

I invite you to conduct your own mini survey into the delicate subject of irregularity.

No, not the affliction arising from our western diet, interesting and prevalent though that may be.  But irregularity as it concerns verbs – and one in particular: text.

You sent a text message on your mobile phone last night.  You want to tell someone.  Would you say: “I texted Maximilian last night”?  Or “I text Maximilian last night”?

Easy.  Texted, say English language purists.  After all, the way to form a simple past tense is just to add an ed.  Text, long in use as a noun, is a relatively new coinage as a verb and as such it is likely to follow the rules.  But my contention is this: those purists might write “texted”, but they are likely to say “text”.  When caught red-handed and challenged, they’ll explain it’s simply a matter of having swallowed the ending because they were speaking quickly, and that the ed was there.  Honest. 

And yet, no such swallowing tends to occur when we say tested or suggested.  It’s likely the extra effort in pronouncing the x just before the t in text creates the difficulty, a sound that does not slide out of the mouth as easily as the st in test.  (Take care when trying this unaided at home.)  We hesitate over that xt sound, and possibly then can’t be bothered to expend the extra energy required to articulate an ed as well.  

Over time, the tendency of the language is to regularise verbs, e.g. strive strove striven to increasing uses of strive strived strived, or dream dreamt dreamt to dream dreamed dreamed.  But text appears to be bucking that trend, and is an aspiring bedfellow in the sub-group of verbs that do not change their past tense or past participle and whose endings already have a past tense feel, verbs such as cast, cost and burst (the st endings) or put, set, hit (the t endings) or bid, rid, spread (the d endings).  Text may therefore one day find itself in grammar books nestled alphabetically amongst all the irregular elite:

         …teach              taught             taught

tear                 tore                 torn

tell                   told                 told

text                text                text

think               thought          thought…

For my money, irregular verbs are part of the music of our language, the pleasing sound change that gives us sleep slept slept rather than sleep sleeped sleeped.  That leads North Americans to say dive dove dove, rather than the ho-hum British dive dived dived.   That entices any creative person to choose sneak snuck snuck over the less juicy sneak sneaked sneaked.  Such words behave according to their Germanic bloodlines (send a postcard if you want the complete lecture on the Ablaut, the Rückumlaut and the Great Vowel Shift) demonstrated in the delightful sound alterations occurring in modern-day German cousins, such as blasen bläst blies geblasen (to blow) or fliegen fliegt flog geflogen (to fly).       

So listen hard next time your friends are speaking and need to use the verb text in the past tense.  My bet is that they’ll thumb their nose at conformity.  My bet is that they’ll sign up for irregularity.  My bet is that they won’t stick on an ed.

 No irregular verbs were harmed in the writing of this blog.

A Royal at the Door

There’s an awful lot of flag-waving going on in my neck of the woods at the moment.  It may not have escaped notice that we’re gearing up for the Olympics at the end of July– an event not without its shockwaves.  From a close reading of the map and the planned road closures for the long-distance cycle race, it looks as though this little patch of territory is going to be barricaded in, with no escape route other than swimming to the far shore of the River Thames. 

Which is precisely the body of water where a flotilla of ships will be bobbing by on Sunday in honour of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the other noteworthy impending national occasion.  We are now heading into four solid days of unabashed jollity. 

When I was younger I used to have dreams in which I met the Queen.   It was all fairly ordinary stuff - she would drop in to share a hotdog (no mustard), or play Monopoly, or leave some ermine in the dressing-up box.  But in the intervening years, something has got very garbled on the aspiration front.  Nowadays, instead, I dream about meeting Simon Cowell.  It’s a recurring scenario.  There’s a mediaeval banquet taking place.  The entertainment is going down the pan – the lutes are untuned, the minstrels frankly appalling.  Simon Cowell is rolling his eyes and holding his head in his hands.  In despair he looks across the table to me, chewing on a beef shank and gulping mead from a tankard.  “So,” he says wearily. “Know any good tunes?”

I’ve never met royalty up close and personal, though I’ve waved at the Queen at the Cenotaph in Ottawa.  Oh and Prince Edward came to the college where I used to work.

The first surprise was that the large shiny Daimler with flapping union flag, chauffeur and insignia that pulled up outside the new art block, which was waiting to be officially opened, contained no Prince Edward at all, but the Mayor.  HRH parked behind him some minutes later in a comparatively unobtrusive black Mercedes with his minder in the passenger seat. 

The party of dignitaries detailed to greet him had already been in the refectory snacking on finger food.  (I can’t believe they produced Menu A, observed my colleague Pete Hinton.)  Then, the Principal, the Chairman of Governors, the Mayor and other bechained people escorted the Prince inside the art block while we, the indignitaries from lesser corners of the college, looked on - scarcely a throng, given the low-key advertisement of the visit, and the absence of students who, now that exams had finished, had shown a clean pair of heels. 

In my humdrum T-shirt and not-quite jeans, I tried to duck the sightlines of our head of department who had scrubbed up particularly well and was striding around in a trim suit.  Pete and I managed to breach the atrium and knocked back what Buck’s Fizz we could lay our hands on, while Prince Edward did the rounds, talking politely to staff, and to the handful of students who had been roped in for the day.  

After about 40 minutes, HRH reappeared in our midst, and the Principal gave a brief speech, claiming that the building would change in the region of 30,000 lives.  Prince Edward did not bat an eyelid at this number but did a minor comedy turn: the one about a prince well used to unveiling plaques to commemorate the official openings of buildings, who – you would think - should know what he's doing, but actually is still practising because anything could go wrong and did you see that gap in the makeshift stage that he might actually fall through?  And in any case, what did the people who’d already supposedly been working in this building think they were playing at since it was only today that the building was official?  It was good-natured and got the required laughs. 

He made his way to the front door,  knelt down to talk to a group of children from the staff nursery, gave a final wave from the driver's seat of the Mercedes and was off, followed at a measured interval by the greater pomp of the chauffeur-driven limo of the Mayor.

Pete and I finished the dregs of the Buck’s Fizz.