Dancing with tadpoles

Previous unremarked TD posts have shown me no one’s particularly interested in an amateur learning to sing the classical repertoire. I’ve no complaints, amateurs deserve what they get. Hey, go out and become professional and sell some recordings.

So I’ve held back. But this is a comparatively new part of me, supplementing an earlier life in journalism, marriage, RAF national service, six years in the USA, menacing illness, novel writing, a love affair with French, wine snobbery and – as Avus points out – being blunt.

I’m at the end of my life and yet there are magic moments when V directs me to a new score. Gradually the tadpoles dancing on five-barred gates break away from their printed form and become available to me. As sounds then, hanging together, as songs. And I reproduce these songs. Imperfectly, true; but better than I would have done a year ago.

And in doing so, wrestling with difficulties where some tadpoles hold back their beauty, I arrive at the far edge of how and why this musical form was created. Hmm. That was harder because there’s a switch to a minor key in the repetition. But not just because the composer was dissatisfied with a bald repeat. A new note influences those that surround it. They become a new phrase. And so there’s a new beauty which echoes – differently – the beauty that went before.

I’m not pretending this is unique. I suspect carpenters experience something similar, as do other craftsmen. I’ve felt it when writing but this is music, something I never thought I’d understand. To be insufferably grandiose I imagine myself as part of the flow that, say, started in Salzburg in the mid-eighteenth century. A cork bobbling in that river. Old but not yet dead.

Towards untroubled water

The elegant Millau bridge is actually a viaduct. From afar it looks like a fleet of yachts and signals to the south-travelling Robinson group we've reached the fringe of the Languedoc area in France where we've holidayed for more than a decade. I needed something noble and beautiful for my mobile's home page. This fills the bill.

It gets me there

 

Is it handsome? Perhaps

it's a case of handsome

is as handsome does

My present car is my third Skoda Octavia, bought consecutively. In all senses it’s the best car I’ve owned which – to my mind – is at it should be. I’ve learned from experience and it was bought to drive not to fondle. Its prime virtue is its seven-speed automatic gearbox which can be switched to manual when descending steep slopes in mid-Wales. All its occupants sit in comfort, its boot is huge (essential for French holidays) yet it is propelled by a comparatively small (ie, 1.4 litre) petrol engine.

You’d hardly know. When I need to accelerate it responds – heartily. On French autoroutes it maintains the legal top speed of 130 kph (80 mph) hour after hour. It’s economical and, thus, the annual road tax is £30. It’s even handsome but perhaps that’s mere familiarity.

It’s also unique in several ways. It’s slightly elderly (bought in 2016) yet it’s done less than 50,000 miles, thanks to the pandemic. More particularly it will almost certainly be the last car I own. I’m 87; the DVLA and insurance companies look warily at such ancients behind the steering wheel.

I had a little epiphany with it. Given its low mileage I decided to extend the warranty costing about £200. Recently a slight leak developed in the cooling system and, lo, it was covered by the warranty. The work took three hours and main-dealer labour costs £100/hour. Do the arithmetic and you’ll see why I’m smiling.

One doesn’t boast about owning a Skoda Octavia at cocktail parties. Nor does one pretend that the car has “character” which I regard as a costly failing. At my age I need a car more than ever before. I love my Skoda because it does what I ask of it. Also because it’s a mechanical marvel. Hard unromantic love.

Passing question

Looks like an Olde Englyssh pub

R and VR, recently,  in some hostelry or other presently unremembered. Photographed by daughter OS (Occasional Speeder) who asks us: "Too sentimental? Why don't you decide?"

To Tone Deaf commenters we ask: "Why don't you decide?"

Where we've been recently

Remote, just off the Massif Centrale

Visits to the bottle bank said it all. The avalanche of glassware - mainly from Affligem, Leffe and Kronenburg, those almighty breweries - announced we were back in France and intent on a hedonistic fortnight that would have no truck with informative ruins, eighteenth-century literature or political discourse.

Pool volley ball gave way to kerbies; you bounce

the ball on the pool edge and...

A BAS LES TORIES Unless there was a celebratory tinge. The results of two UK bye-elections were toasted with a bottle of Bollinger (€90) followed by a multi-layered red from the Chabanon winery in Montpeyroux (€58). I explained to the waitress that our high spirits were symbolic of a kick up the arse for the UK government, though in my enthusiasm I forgot the vulgar translation for "arse" and opted for the more demure "derrière" All quite oafish, I confess.

Best fruit/veg in the world

FOREIGN LANGUAGE TALK There was, of course, conversation with the natives. At a key-grinder's atelier I was shown a replacement strap for VR's wristwatch and given whispered advice on the price. I raised my hands in mock horror, crying out, "Mon Dieux, je suis en France!" A woman conducting a more Jane Austen-ish transaction down the counter, turned towards me, eyebrows arched, and laughed immoderately. Nationality unknown but suspected French. Given her middle-class, understated print dress I'm sure she regretted this laughter later in the day.

ENOUGH CASH? We are a family party of eight, four travelling by car, four by plane. Normally, rented villas become available at 4 pm on the initial Saturday, which means that there's a scramble for provisions after unloading the car. This villa, on the remote fringe of the Massif Centrale, was free from midday and we had time to spend on acquiring goodies. Time to spend cash too. The first supermarket buy came to €600-plus and a day later a similar sum was disbursed. I'd allocated what seemed like a large sum for this holiday which, given our age, might be our last in France. Would this "large sum" not be enough? All those bottles. But then there's always debt.

NOISE LEADS TO SEX The pool is, of course, essential with temperatures in the thirties  Meals are out-of-doors but family conversation is hindered by the incredible racket from the cicadas in the mature trees adjacent to the villa. Drink helps soften this noise somewhat and eventually the cicadas' love songs turn into the physical activity the songs had yearned for and which the insects perform quite  quietly.

Villa came with car park

PURGED Illness - for both of us - meant there were doubts about whether this holiday would come to pass. Emerging from the Channel Tunnel beyond the Calais suburbs brought with it a sense of rebirth. Of life on a higher level, especially given the stew of incompetence, infighting, greed and hopelessness we'd left behind.

LINGO’S WHAT COUNTS But why France? It has national flaws of its own, some of them it shares with the UK. For me language lies at the heart of the attraction. Wrestle with it, use it, succeed (occasionally) with it; a perpetual but seemingly worthwhile conflict. It's the language best suited for giving precise directions; a smallish matter but hinting at larger issues. French also accompanies the most acceptable national anthem I know:  not pompous, not outdated, genuinely stirring, brutal but modified with a soupçon of poetry. Unlike the Brits (and the Americans) who assume everyone should speak English, the French appreciate foreigners who make an effort to speak   their difficult tongue. I relish the opportunity.

The French are rather good

at roadside car parks. That's

PB emerging from sylvan glades

BELLY COMFORT French cuisine has deteriorated over the years, notably the home cooking that used to figure in certain modest restaurants. Pizza is no substitute.

French supermarkets compensate, especially at the meat, fresh fish, and fruit/veg counters. Availability is not stretched from worldwide sources; if nectarines are out of season they're not sold. And bread comes in all sorts of types, shapes and flavours. But supermarkets have another function: the expression of a large part of a country's culture.  If I'm not pressed (not always the case) I wander analytically, checking out what products  are important to the French  compared with things on the other side of the Channel. Amazingly, Hollandaise sauce - a French invention - was for a time only available in British supermarkets. French wine racks concentrate exhaustively on local vineyards, which is a good thing, but to ignore, totally, wines from the Antipodes and (a notch up in price) the USA suggests a degree of protectionism.

Villa's greatest asset

STYLISH CONSUMPTION Pavement (US: sidewalk) bar extensions are a French speciality, even in heavy overcoat weather. To drink inside a bar always seems like a wasted opportunity. As a spectator sport, nothing beats a sequence of expressos to the accompaniment of French drivers using their cars as tools of oppression.

PS I've bust the 300-word limit, but it's been a long time

An opportunity missed

Squalid enough to require a tidy-up?

Problem solved but ashes remain

I should have used my camera. It was truly impressive, even frightening. But I’m a words-man, I don’t instinctively think in terms of photos. Here’s the story.

Years ago I posted an image of my study on Tone Deaf. Stella – a commenter now departed to Twitter, alas – described what she saw as a mancave. My first encounter with the word; it stuck in my mind.

Over the years my mancave has become progressively more squalid. Worse still, it’s become less efficient. I just can’t find stuff. Time to tidy up, to start discarding the ramparts of rubbish. Tax statements that go back to the early oughties; investment data that’s a decade out of date.

Which means the squalor coefficient has got even worse (see pic). But, then, I must suffer to make myself more comfortable.

But here’s the problem. One cannot merely throw away old tax statements; who knows into whose hands they may fall. They need to be destroyed.

I do have a shredder but the work is painfully slow. Two or three sheets at a time.

I don’t have an incinerator as such but I do have a chimenea, its more civilised sibling. An under-used device. First step: knock on neighbours’ doors and ask their permission to temporarily pollute the local environment. Permission given.

Take a handful of paper, screw into ball, drop ball down chimenea’s chimney, more balls, a drop of methylated spirit, then a lighted match.

And wow! Flames almost a metre high roaring up out of the chimney. I was entranced. And delighted by the speed of destruction; problem solved in less than an hour.

But all I’ve got is the aftermath. No spectacular flames for you all. Just a metal basket full of ashes.

VR says such ashes may benefit the garden. Can anyone confirm?

Oh for a muse of fire... etc, etc.

Can't find the photo of me on stage, haven't

the energy. Instead, here's Guildford

Cathedral. It's modern, as you may have guessed

When things go wrong in publishing (Someone gets fired. A magazine is closed. A colleague dies unexpectedly.) it’s traditional to resort to “gallows humour”, in effect to turn the bad thing into a joke.

In the early eighties a large UK publishing company decided to get rid of its specialist division in Guildford, where I worked. Without any experience I proposed writing and directing a collection of five related playlets called Guildford’s Last Launch wherein the division’s employees would perform a comical version of their coming disaster.

Although I had never acted I cast myself as the over-arching narrator linking these five pieces. Two playlets caused surprised laughter in the audience, mainly because three members of the cast had previously acted. The other playlets got by. That’s as maybe.

But how do you (ie, me) learn to act in two or three weeks? It seemed important to dress the part: black trousers and a black polo-neck endowed me with the necessary gravitas. In those days I drove to work (23 miles) and memorised my lines en route, later rewriting those that were duff. Then giving them life by shouting some, whispering others, banging the steering wheel for emphasis.

In the other direction the route I took was a busy road into London. Other drivers, caught in traffic, must have wondered if I’d been driven mad by the slow progress. But I progressed. I’m not sure I became an actor but there’s a photo of me in performance – clenched fist waving – that looks plausible. Audience laughter helped and – Good grief! – I enjoyed myself. A decade later, addressing a very mixed audience in Tokyo, I employed some tricks of timing that had gone down well in Guildford.

Yes, if an opportunity arose I’d give it a go. Old as I am.