Mslexia Blog

I've great pleasure in announcing that I've been asked to guest blog for Mslexia magazine from March until May.  During that time, I'll be looking at the ups and downs of attempting to write song lyrics.  You can find my post here.

For What This Tooth Has Munched, May I Be Truly Thankful

A sense of foreboding, sadness, apprehension.  Shortly I will be leaving to go to the dentist for the extraction of a molar from my lower left jaw.  I’ve already managed to put off the procedure once, but it is the day of reckoning and I must say farewell to a trusted friend.

This is not just any molar, but the important one in the middle, the one that’s led the way through family feasts, cream teas, dîners à deux, the explorations of olives, kumquats and pomegranates. 

I’m not sure the tooth fairy will be able to stump up adequate recompense.  If the molar is stuffed under my pillow tonight, I will expect a thick wodge of notes tomorrow morning – enough for Eurostar to Paris, or robust domestic appliance, or delicately carved mandolin. 

Not that I wish for the remains of the tooth to be placed ceremoniously into my hands in any case, even if it were to be extracted in one neat piece.  It might  engender the kind of horror I frequently feel at the dentist.  In fact, rule three on my random and varied list of Ten Things to Keep You (Sort Of) Sane Throughout Life concerns being in the dentist’s chair:

3. While having a tooth filled, never, ever, allow your tongue to stray over the area your dentist has just drilled out.

Bits of ex-molar in my palm may just be a one souvenir too many.

But the imminent loss of my tooth, and the acute reluctance to give it up remind me that today there are people who will be facing so much more: surgery to surrender parts of their body for life-saving reasons.  For once, there is just a glimpse, a smidgeon, a flash of humble kinship.

Dog Tales

(from a Spanish notebook)

There is an enormous pile of dog poo outside my front door. 

Not my front door in England, but the door of the little casita I’ve rented for a week in Orgiva in the Alpujarras in southern Spain.

As I eyeball it, the pile in question seems to be actually sitting on my next-door neighbour’s territory, that is if any of us are allowed to claim jurisdiction of the street in the first place.  But in our narrow cul-de-sac, my door is without question the closest door to the deposits of a very large dog – or a smaller one who has been saving up all week. 

As the nearest resident to the unmissable feature on the pavement that now needs to be manoeuvred around, it must be my responsibility to commence emergency removal procedures.  But I don’t possess a trowel, much less a spade, nor have I the stomach to use hands and a (jumbo) plastic bag.

Is anyone watching my hesitation?  I look nervously around at all the windows.  But there again, in this town generally there appears to be a laissez-faire attitude not just to the passings of dogs, but their passage as well.  They run freely through the streets, without identifying collars, sometimes alone or in pairs, sometimes following their owners, or even sitting obediently at cafes.  So far, they have been gentle and unmenacing.  A majority of them spend their entire lives outside, and start up a yowling echoing chorus at intervals during the night. 

There is a different way with dogs here.  I can’t help thinking about the black sports bag in the cafe of the bus station in Malaga yesterday.  Plonked on the chair beside a woman in a green wool coat, it independently started up a routine of quiverings and tremblings.  It lolled around on the seat. It lurched dangerously close to the edge.  A tidbit was fed through its zip.  Then another.   Its interior concealed the small white curly-haired dog I’d seen in the woman’s arms half an hour before.  The pooch was packed, ready for transportation.

And I remember the words of a bar owner in another Spanish town that I visited last autumn.  “Carolina is bad, very bad,” he had said.  Carolina was tiny, adorable, and chained outside to the leg of a bar-football table.  “Loli, her mother, is very good.  She doesn't chase cars like Carolina does.  But Carolina, you are very bad.”  And he frowned and wagged his finger at her.  Loli and Carolina were Chihuahuas, Carolina a puppy of 56 days old.

Back in Orgiva, later in the day, I meet a charming elderly neighbour who lives opposite me.  She tells me she is pleased I am staying in the little house – it once belonged to her family.  We exchange more pleasantries and then it is time to seize the moment.  I point to the offending heap only a metre and a half from where we are standing, the huge brown blot in the cul-de-sac of light-coloured stone and whitewashed houses.  I ask her what I can do.  She shrugs her shoulders, and says that the street will be cleaned.  Or the rain will wash it away. 

Or at least, I think that’s what she says.

I’m off the hook.  And I’m hoping for a short but well-aimed shower during the night.

Voiceless

And when Voice is kaput, what next?

Voice that has blanketed itself in mucus and phlegm.

Voice that has buried itself deep, refusing to be coaxed out with promises of  chocolate fudge sundaes.  All grumpy and sorry for itself, pulling the duvet over its head.  Playing hard to get, its sulky outline infuriating.

Voice that’s taken a hike.  Gone off in a huff though you've no idea why, berate yourself with thoughts of was it something that I said?

Voice that’s gone whiskery and curmudgeonly.  Retreated.  Holding out in a log cabin in the woods.  Refusing even to wave through the gaps in the planks, though you know it's in there because you’ve smelt the smoke and seen the discarded fur of a trapped weasel.

Voice that’s gone to wallow in something closer to the ground.  A bleat.  A grunt. 

Voice that sends you to internet forums.  Help for Voice.  The Dos and the Don’ts.  Do take honey, lemon, slippery elm.  Don’t drink milk, eat cheese.  Do shut up.  Don’t test Voice out too soon, startle it half-naked, make it run off again.

And the hope, the prayer that becomes Vocalzones.  The cheat, the rescue that is Vocalzones, not knowing the science of it all, just out for the short-term remedy.  Because Voice, having been AWOL all week, needs to be brought to heel.  The show must go on.

And half an hour after the first Vocalzone has kicked in, Voice is suddenly there.  It’s got up, got itself dressed.  Though not wearing the outfit you’d have chosen, it’s done the right thing.

Voice is surly.  

But it’s not completely abandoned you after all.

Another Name in the Supper Pot - Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun

Self-portrait in a straw hat 1782

You probably know the game – the one where you make up an ideal guest list and choose famous people, living or dead, you’d like to invite round for dinner. 

Well, I’ve just had to add a new person to my list.

There she was, framed in a corner of the National Gallery in London, at first seemingly just A.N. Other society beauty, until closer inspection revealed a telltale palette and paintbrushes.   It turned out that the pretty pink-cheeked woman in a flirty hat with voluptuous feather was none other than the portraitist Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

She was the second shock in the space of fifteen minutes.  Back in the Impressionist section of the gallery, I’d just realised (klutz moment) that the painter Morisot, whose work I’ve long admired - even had on my student walls in postcard form - was in fact Berthe Morisot, for Bertha, not for the rather more trouser-wearing Bert Morisot, her alter ego.   So much for the assumption that every single painter on display was necessarily male.

The French painter Vigée Le Brun (1755 – 1842) in fact pre-dated the Impressionists by a hundred years.  How much more remarkable does it seem, then, that she was able to establish herself in the male-dominated world of Paris in the late eighteenth century during the upheavals of the French Revolution.

It’s true that she had some help in her genes and circumstances.  Her father was a painter, Louis Vigée, and after he tragically died when she was twelve, a new and relatively wealthy stepfather was able to pay for painting lessons.  At the age of  twenty  she married the painter and art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun whose circle of influence  undoubtedly helped her but who kept control of her money, often to pay off his gambling debts.

But her talent was incontestable.  It had manifested young and had burst out everywhere at the boarding school she attended from the age of six to eleven.  Her memoirs tell us: “I scrawled on everything at all seasons; my copy-books, and even my schoolmates', I decorated with marginal drawings of heads, some full-face, others in profile; on the walls of the dormitory I drew faces and landscapes with coloured chalks.  So it may easily be imagined how often I was condemned to bread and water.  I made use of my leisure moments outdoors in tracing any figures on the ground that happened to come into my head.  At seven or eight, I remember, I made a picture by lamplight of a man with a beard….  When my father saw it he went into transports of joy, exclaiming: ‘You will be a painter, child, if ever there was one!’ "

Elisabeth (I think we can move  on to first-name terms) enjoyed considerable success within her own lifetime, leaving behind 660 portraits and 200 landscapes.  She painted many of “the most delightful and most distinguished men and women in Europe” – including members of the nobility, the Prince of Wales, Lord Byron, the family of Catherine the Great of Russia. 

But I’m not inviting her round for supper solely on the strength of her contact list, but for the anecdotes, insight and pioneering spirit she’s likely to impart.   For example, I’ll want to find out more about her singing sprees with Marie Antoinette.  During the sittings for more than thirty portraits, it seems that they would warble duets by Grétry, for Marie Antoinette “was exceedingly fond of music, although she did not sing very true.”  And we’ll certainly need to get the low-down on the sessions with the Prince of Wales (the future George IV) which enraged those English painters who were elbowed aside for the privilege and which worried the Queen Mother enough into thinking that some kind of hanky-panky was going on. 

I’ll want to ask her about her scarf-draping techniques that came from her intense dislike of the female fashion at that time, when she found that wrapping bits of material made portraits “a little more picturesque”.   Perhaps, too, she’ll reveal more about that famous exchange with an English painter she simply describes as M:  "It seems that my lace shocks you, although I have painted none for fifteen years.   I vastly prefer scarves, which you, sir, would do well yourself to employ.  Scarves, you may believe me, are a boon to painters, and had you used them you would have acquired good taste in draping, in which you are deficient.”

She’ll be fascinating, no doubt, about her artistic eye, and to what extent she was tempted to enhance the appearance of her sitters.  Marie Antoinette, although pitchy of voice, apparently possessed an amazing complexion.  “I never have seen one so brilliant,” writes Elisabeth, “and brilliant is the word, for her skin was so transparent that it bore no umber in the painting.  Neither could I render the real effect of it as I wished.  I had no colours to paint such freshness, such delicate tints, which were hers alone, and which I had never seen in any other woman.”  

Marie Antoinette by Vigée Le Brun

She had equally flattering comments to make about the Prince of Wales:  “Tall and well-built, he had a handsome face; his features were all regular and distinguished.  He wore a wig very artistically disposed, the hair parted on the forehead like the Apollo di Belvedere's, and this suited him to perfection.”

Whereas she may have felt favourable towards its monarch, generally, however, she found England "unmerry".    She has a point -  at the time she visited, London had no picture gallery, and great works of art could only be seen in the private homes of the wealthy.  There was, therefore, much less of interest for an artist compared to Paris or Rome.    And  “Sunday in London is as dismal as the climate…" she writes.  " The English are used to braving their weather.  I often met them in the pouring rain, riding without umbrellas in open carriages. They are satisfied with wrapping their cloaks about them, but this has its drawbacks for strangers unaccustomed to such a watery state of things.” 

The “watery state of things” was no mere idle complaint, for unlike in Paris, she needed to keep a fire burning constantly in her studio, then judge and juggle the distances of her canvasses from the grate in order to dry them.

She’ll be a sparky and fascinating guest.  To make her feel comfortable on this first visit, I’ll arrange proceedings according to her own taste:  

• the cleverest will get an invitation including, perhaps, a poet, a viscount, an actress
• start time will be 9.0 pm
• ladies will wear white gowns
• it will be a light evening repast -  some fowl, some fish, a dish of vegetables, a salad
• no politics - but we’ll chat about literature and tell anecdotes of the hour
• there will be refined merriment and diversions such as charades
• no extra food will be provided, even if guests stay until midnight

I hope more than anything that she will inspire us about her passion for art.   “Nor has that passion ever diminished; it seems to me that it has even gone on growing with time, for to-day I feel under the spell of it as much as ever, and shall, I hope, until the hour of death.”

All quotations from A Celebration of Women Writers: Memoirs of Madame Vigée Le Brun (1755 -1842)

by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Translated by Lionel Strachey, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1903.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/lebrun/memoirs/memoirs.html

Out in the Forest

Out in the forest at this time of year, everything is holding its breath.  Although mid-winter, there's a lightening amongst the deciduous trees.  Branches are defined and free of clutter.  Space has been cleared in preparation for the new.  Vistas are generous.  You can see things you can’t normally see when foliage complicates the issue. 

But of course, all is not one hundred percent well.  Ash dieback has spread to our shores.  A disease first noticed in Lithuania, but with origins in Asia, it is sweeping eastwards, and making steady and grim progress through our woodlands.    

In Norse mythology, the tree of life, Yggdrasil, is a giant ash that links the worlds.  Should it be affected, then all life is threatened.  

It is a metaphor with arresting resonance, as much as the words of a forester who on a recent radio programme talked about the measures needed to cope with this new disease and the serious thought required as to what trees might be able to replace the stricken ash. What he mentioned has stuck with me: that in the maintenance of a forest, there is nothing short-term at all.  Decisions made today would far out-reach his own span of time.  He would not live to see many of the results of his work, but was involved in stewardship for a coming century and future generations. 

Listening to him, I thought of people who would benefit from such an approach, and perhaps from a compulsory six months work experience in a forest – politicians, economists, industrialists… But then my list grew and grew to pretty much everyone on this planet, regardless of occupation or condition.  We all, let's face it, ultimately need to honour the patch around us, protect its possibilities for those who will succeed us, and take responsibility for what we choose to fell and what we choose to nurture.

So here's to the new dreams you plant in 2013 - may a number of them be not of the instant variety but unfurl gradually into something majestic, sturdy and truly lasting. 

Silent Night

It's Christmas Eve, and on the radio, a solo choirboy is singing the carol Once in Royal David's City - the traditional start to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.  The opening notes are a particularly exquisite sound coming out of the hush beforehand.  

The sudden presence of his voice is mesmerising, just as other unexpected flourishes of sound can be - a note, a trill, a thrum, a chord on a piano, even a loud body-jangling open E from an electric guitar.  For what is remarkable and special about sound is, of course, its contrast to the silence that precedes it.

A few weeks ago, John Humphreys of Radio 4's Today programme, had a rant about how noisy our lives have become.  He's got a point.  It's not just aeroplanes and traffic, but the muzak in lifts, concourses, restaurants, bars, supermarkets, shops.  We actually abuse music - using it as a cover, a gauze, a medication to manipulate mood, allowing it to speak for us or even create our personality, like getting fixated on the make of car we drive, and proclaiming to the world - as if it actually needs to know - this is the kind of music I listen to.  

On the recent X Factor final, a show I dip into because I am genuinely interested in the way the singers handle their material, I nearly went demented with the constant stream of noise. There were never any moments of quiet - just an incessant parade of loud commercials, followed by musically-accompanied back stories of the contestants.  When the finalists came to their actual performance, the impact had been lessened by the burbling hum that had been continual throughout.  There was no differentiation.

On a music course I attended a couple of years ago, an inspired teacher called Radha did not only remind us through group singing how organic and in-the-moment music can be, but also the importance of really listening.  As an exercise she asked us to bring a favourite piece of music - either a song or an extract lasting no longer than five minutes.  We arranged ourselves in a circle on the floor as, one by one, each person took a turn to play the chosen music, simply said his or her name and then went quietly to sit in the centre of the circle.  There was no explanation, no preamble, and no distraction.  The rest of us simply lay there with our open ears and quietened minds, truly absorbed in what we could hear.  

Five minutes of listening in this way was nourishing, and incomparable with five hours of walking as an automaton through unceasing soundscape.

So when I wish you a Silent Night this Christmas, it's only so that you can truly enjoy the sheer delight of sound as it arises out of peace and quiet, a rediscovery of the fresh impact of voices, the suddenness of harmony, the surprise of dissonance, perhaps the unexpected jingle from Santa's sleigh flying overhead...

The Hapsburg Jaw, the Griffiths Hamstrung

Carlos II of Spain (1661 - 1700)

There was something about the movement of chins and the pronounced nature of chewing at dinner the other day that propelled us into a discussion about the Hapsburgs.

I wondered, idly and friskily, if the latest in the line, Otto von Hapsburg, who died last year, needed a special annexe for his coffin, a kind of side-car if you will, to accommodate the famed Hapsburg Jaw. 

This genetic defect, medically known as prognathism, plagued members of the royal house of Hapsburg as payback for their habit of searching a little too close to home for matrimonial partners.  Although moneybags and political power may have been safeguarded, the constant inter-marrying resulted in a hereditary protruding lower jaw, passed on by a dominant gene.

A hasty search on the internet revealed comforting news about the late Otto, son of the last Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary.   A passionate anti-nationalist (and fervently opposed to the Austrian Nazi movement) he was a member of the European parliament, with a track record of public service at high level.  As a member of the Hapsburg-Lorraine family, a branch that seems to have been bypassed by the misshapen mandible, his facial contours were pleasingly normal.  

How markedly he contrasted, however, with Carlos II (pictured at the top of this blog) who was the last of the Spanish Hapsburgs.  Unseemly tangles amongst Carlos’s forebears - for example, his mother also technically being his first cousin, his grandmother also being his aunt, and his other grandmother also being his great-grandmother - created such acute inbreeding that for this unfortunate king, a mammoth underbite was the least of his worries.  He could not walk until he was eight, had limited intellectual capacity, and suffered both from an extended childhood and premature senility.  He married twice but was unable to produce heirs.  When he died at the age of 38 in 1700, the coroner’s report stated that as well as his body lacking blood, his heart being minute (the size of a grain of pepper), his lungs and intestines raddled, "he had a single testicle which was as black as carbon and his head was full of water.”

Compared to the afflictions outlined above, I therefore almost hesitate to bring up the subject of the rather more trifling Griffiths Hamstrung.  This condition – which is basically a deficient, possibly wizened, hamstring – is a constant embarrassment for me and mine.  It renders us completely incapable of hunkering down with feet planted flat on the ground.  Athleticism seems to matter little.  Close kin who have regularly worked out at a gym still cannot perform such essential actions as squatting at the bus stop or in the paddy field, crouching to produce a sit spin or a Teapot at the ice rink, or positioning themselves efficiently by a back wheel for a tyre change. 

Indeed, during attempts to get closer to the floor without my heels coming up, even my yoga teacher has been taken aback by the extent of the Griffiths Hamstrung.  “Don’t stick your bottom out,” she has instructed, despairingly, not realising that a thrust of the posterior is the only way to achieve even a few inches of movement.

Though I’ve seen this problem pop up in offspring, siblings and nephews, the Hamstrung isn’t genetic at all.  It affects many westerners.  If you sit all day at the computer, bad news.  If you also wear high heels, even worse.  If you haven’t tried to hunker since the age of two, forget it.  The way we generally lead our lives as if recumbent in a passenger seat, rather than getting out to sprint or stretch, is at fault.

Free of Griffiths Hamstrung

Advanced surgery and complex dentistry could have perhaps remedied Carlos II’s Hapsburg Jaw.  Something, too, can apparently be done about the Hamstrung: 

Ready? OK, back against the wall, bottom in, down a millimetre, another millimetre…

Something Fishy About Sin....

...something sinful about fish

On my recent visit to Spain, aboard the bus from Malaga to Orgiva, a well-dressed  and impeccably coiffed lady sat down beside me.   She began a friendly conversation about where she was going for the weekend, where she lived – look, just over there in that smart neighbourhood, that very apartment building, a few tens of metres from the sea.

And then, fifteen minutes further into our journey, she pointed out of the window and began to talk about sin. 

Now this was a surprising turn, given the run-of-the-mill nature of everything thus far.  Why the sudden lurch into sin?  What would come next?  A scouring stare?  A toe-curling confession?   I coughed and played for time.  She pointed again towards the village we were passing through, with its whitewashed houses clustering around the shore. 

And then I got it.  Fish.  She was talking about fish.

The Spanish word for fish is pescado.  But drop the “s” –  and you are left with pecado, meaning "sin". 

But why on earth would anyone want to drop the “s” in the first place?  Indeed.  This is the constant cry as you travel around Andalucia and come to realise that  “s” has been hounded to the verge of extinction.  The southern Spaniards have charmingly seen fit to extract “s”s  from the middle and ends of their words with the diligence of dentists.

So pescado is pronounced pecado.  Buenos días becomes bueno día.  Despues (meaning “after”) becomes de-pue.  And so on.

(To give you a hint of what it’s like trying to keep abreast of things during a haemorrhage of this vital consonant, try saying the following sentence, as quickly as you can, without any of the "s"s:  “Let’s eat goose this Christmas”.   And see if anyone can understand you.)

Of course, context becomes vital.  It was perhaps idiotic to be travelling through a fishing village assuming my bus companion was prattling on about sin, when clearly the nets and boats should have given the game away.  But it is  intriguing how dangerously close are sin and fish in a couple of other languages.  An Italian fisherman, pescatore, could easily turn, with an injudicious tongue slip, into a sinner, peccatore.  A Frenchman who goes fishing, pêcher, is homophonically embracing sin, péché.  And, depending on what blots are on his conscience,  he may not automatically infer the reel and rod should you waltz up to him and ask bluntly: “Vous êtes pêcheur?”  

But just think of the whole new raft of possible images:

a sin-monger

a sin market

a shoal of sin

a haul of sin

a sinning net

deepwater sin

wriggling sin

slippery sin

fresh sin

a sin laid out to dry

Fish.  Sin.  Now irrevocably entwined.

Typing Up a Storm

Typewriter in the house of Robert Graves, Deia, Mallorca

Writing in longhand.  The impulse from your wrist to form letters.  Ink flowing like blood, like dark milk, like grape juice.  Sufficient delay to dredge your depths.  Notebooks covered with splotches and underlinings.

Versus typing on a keyboard.  Torrential clicking when ideas flow and you must keep pace.  Reams of churned paper that already have the look of something organised and official.

Both approaches are useful, depending on context and type of work. 

When I decided, back in the mists, that I wanted to be a purveyor of words, it was essential to learn to type - using all ten fingers as swiftly as possible.  Although the advent of word processors and PCs was just around the corner, my first writer’s tools were a Remington typewriter and a gallon of correcting fluid.

But I lacked speed and technique, and so enrolled for three months at a secretarial college in west London.  The classes crammed with non-native speakers, the shabby premises, and the whiff of unregulation were reflected in very reasonable fees.  Students came and went, and there was always room for more in that quirky establishment - where it appeared the tea lady ruled the roost by the quantity of tea or biscuits she awarded, and where the typing teacher was clipped and meticulously English.  “What is your Christian name?” she would habitually ask new Arab arrivals, much to their bewilderment.

One day I came to college forty-five minutes early, seeking warmth and the possibility of getting ahead with my work.   Within ten minutes, the assistant principal marched in.  An octogenarian, she wore a wig which had fitted her head thirty years before, but which had long since shed bits of itself down to the webbing.  It was now a patchy-haired beret skewed at a worrying angle.

She was stiff with anger.  “What on earth are you doing?  Classes don’t begin until 9.0 a.m.,” she shouted.  “You foreigners are all the same.  No concept of correct behaviour.” 

I stood away from my desk, stretched up to my full five-foot-four-inches, and responded through clenched teeth:  “I’ll have you know that I was born in England, so I’m not exactly a foreigner.   And how dare you suggest that they or I don’t know how to behave.  For your information, I happen to have been brought up correctly.  In any case, the college was open.  I wanted to do some more practice.  This is actually important for my career.” 

Or words to that effect.

News of the altercation soon spread.  The tea lady sidled up to me with a fresh brew in her huge aluminium teapot and an unprecedented three Rich Tea biscuits.  She asked what I was hoping to do in life.  I told her I wanted to be a journalist. 

“I think I can help you,” she said. 

“Oh?”  My ears pricked up. 

“My nephew works at the Daily Express.” 

It wasn’t the paper I had in mind, but a start is a start.   

“What does he do?”  I asked.  Even a junior reporter might be able to put in a good word, or smuggle me in as pencil-case holder on a celebrity assignment.

“He’s the car park attendant,” she said.

That afternoon, I was summoned to the principal’s office.  Preparing myself for a dressing-down, I sat…(demurely I was going to write, but it was more nail-chewingly)…in my chair.

“The assistant principal…” she began.

Gulp.

“The assistant principal is retiring in two months.  Would you like her job?”

Gentle reader, I’m pleased to tell you that etiquette held good and I managed to turn down the job without resorting to words like stick and sun and don’t and shine, before packing up my 63 wpm typing skills and heading off into the west London streets.

But thanks to that school, ever after there’s been that delicious choice:

Slow contemplative doodle?  Or energetic word tumble?

The Month-Namer

As this eighth month of the year slides rapidly to a close, I’ve a bone to pick with the Namer of Months.

Of course, it isn’t the eighth month.  You’ll have observed that, in fact, we’re at the end of the tenth month, although October, from Latin octo, meaning eight, is enough to throw you off the scent.  And let’s not get started on October’s band of hapless siblings – September (seven) November (nine) and December (ten).

So why the confusion?   To its credit, the early Roman calendar of 304 days did attempt to keep things simple by decimalising the year, although this was wholly at the expense of the period we now know of as January and February, which was written off as a monthless limbo where, let's face it, not much happened.  The year actually began in March. 

And here, some effort was expended.  March, an assertive little entity, burst in named for Mars, the Roman god of war.  This was followed by the poetic idea of opening, aperire, giving us April.  May was named after the Greek fertility goddess, Maia, and June after the Roman goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter (though Ovid suggests these two months could have been derived from maiores, the month of elders, and iuniores, the month of youth). 

But then, the Month-Namer ran plum out of ideas, stalled, and came up with the ho-hum Quintilis, (fifth month) and Sextilis, (sixth month) then seventh month, eighth month, and so on, yawn, before skipping out forever into the long afternoon, his work done.

Even when January and February - more imaginatively named for Janus, the god of the doorway, and after the purification ritual of Februa - were later parachuted in about 700 BC to allow the calendar to conform to a lunar year of 354 days, the other months simply budged up to create space and did not alter their names.   Nor did the emperors Julius and Augustus Caesar do much more than get their noses into the trough and snaffle the two premium summer months for themselves.  True, July and August are an improvement on Quintilis and Sextilis, but the aberration of the mis-named four last months remains.

When a friend studying Finnish told me the names of the months in that language, I felt both enchanted and short-changed.  Here was a language that did not resort to month-by-number, but used a different kind of logic, for example:

helmikuu – “pearl month”, possibly because melting snow on

branches can create droplets which when they refreeze are like ice pearls (our February)

heinäkuu  - “hay month” (our July)

lokakuu – “mud month” (our October)

We need only to turn to languages that do not derive entirely from Latin roots to find similar delights.  In Polish, for example, we have a calendar translated as meaning;

styczeń - touching or joining month

luty - cruel or frosty month

marzec – from the Latin Martius

kwiecień – blossom month

mai – from the Latin Maius

czerwiec – carmine scale month (gathering of larvae from the insect czerw to

make red dye)

lipiec – linden or lime tree month

sierpień – sickle month

wrzesień – heather month

paźdzjernik – broken flax stalk month

listopad – leaf fall month

grudzień – frozen clod month

But, in fact, we don’t don’t have to scratch very far to find this sort of thinking in our own inheritance.  To Anglo-Saxons, February was Mud Month (solmonað).  June was drimilcemonað, Month of Three Milkings, supposedly from the longer days, succulent grasses and greater yield in the cows. 

So this week, I’d like to offer you the fun of not just thinking up more appropriate names for September, October, November and December, but creating an entirely new calendar particular to yourself.  For example, for you, August may not be connected with sickles, or February with pearls.  Think of your own associations – perhaps connected with childhood, perhaps sporting activities that you do, perhaps aspirations.  All I ask is that you try to avoid redubbing April Tax Month………

In my own very personal calendar, I’ve taken it one step further from the association with activity to thinking of one word that encapsulates and deepens this idea.  December, for me would be month of darkness but I’d like to call it Lanterns, to symbolise the notion of illumination and hope in the longer nights.  November is a month I now associate entirely with my father – the month of his birth, the month of his death, the month of remembrance.  For me it is therefore Paternus (derived from pater, meaning father).  July I’d like to call Molten, in honour of the hot, melting days I associate with that month in my Canadian childhood.  My calendar would look like this:

Moonscar – month where moon and wan skies predominate

Sanctuary – month to retreat, rethink

Reveille – month of fanfare to jolt the season awake

Groundswell – month of growth and upsurge

Roundelay – month to dance

Touchstone – month of examinations

Molten – month of humid heat, hazy hot suns

Escapade – month of holiday, letting one’s hair down

Flitsong – month with consciousness of birds, their flight, their migration

Firebrand – month of vivid red and orange leaf-fall, bonfires

Paternus – month of my father

Lanterns – month of paths through darkness

Your turn!

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!”