BACK HOME (IN MP)

THE NEW (OLD) ABBEY

I went to see a matinee performance of "The Big House" by Lennox Robinson at the Abbey Theatre today.
I especially wanted to see the new interior. Last year the seating was redone so that now every seat is unobstructed. In the old auditorium (opened in 1966, the year of the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Revolution) the main part of the auditorium had seating that was pretty much all on the same level. There was also a balcony for better views of the stage. Now the balcony is gone and all the seats rise up steeply from the stage - a much better arrangement.
The play, first performed in 1926 very shortly after the events that it depicts, dealt with the history of a "big house" in West Cork during the period after the World War when Ireland saw its own war, first with England, then with ourselves, and then with the new Free State Government that tried to put an end to the Republican insurgency. The big house survives most of these challenges because of the respect the people of the (fictional) village of Baldoney had for the Anglo-Irish family that owned the house. But in the end the Irregulars (Republican fighters who rejected the treaty with Britain that gave Ireland a partial independence) torched the house, as they did many others.
I really enjoyed the show. There is something about live theatre that is magical. There is no amplification in the theatre, just the projected voices of the actors to command the attention of the audience. The Abbey is a really nice place now - it's hard to believe that the Government is going ahead with plans to build a whole new Abbey Theatre in the newly developed Docklands area. The Abbey is such a fixture of the inner city - it has been at this site in
Abbey Street since it opened in 1904 (The present building was built after a fire destroyed the original, but it was rebuilt in the same place in Abbey Street). I think we do need a new, modern theatre for spectaculars like "Riverdance" and that can be built anywhere. But the Abbey is the Abbey, the National Theatre of Ireland, and should stay exactly where it started in Abbey Street.

LAST NIGHT IN MONTSOREAU

We spent a wonderful day exploring the chateau and town of Azay-le-Rideau. When we got back to Montsoreau in the afternoon we found the Conforma people had already come to deliver our new mattresses. Unfortunately, we weren’t there to receive them. We had arranged for the delivery to be made on the next day, Friday. We tried to call the company but it was difficult finding someone who thought that this was a problem. Finally, while we were on hold, we went across the street to ask Gregoire, the guy who staffs the Maison de Parc Naturel Regional, to help us. He had no trouble rescheduling the delivery, but he never did get a satisfactory reason why they had come a day early. It seems that Tim Holland’s theory is correct!
With all that taken care of we could relax a little. Helen said she would like some rosé wine so we walked down to our local wine vendor to buy a couple of bottles. Between the three of us we were able to communicate what we wanted to the woman in charge and her teenage daughter who was helping out. I asked the teenager if she could speak English. She said she couldn’t even though she has been studying it for five years. We didn’t feel so bad about our feeble efforts to speak French when we heard that.
As it started to get dusky we walked down to the creperie for dinner.

AZAY-LE-RIDEAU

Rich had talked about how beautiful Azay-le-Rideau is, though he had never been inside the chateau. We decided to take Timmy and Helen there.
We had a late start. As we were leaving we saw that the mason’s car was in the driveway of the new chambe de hote that is being built/rebuilt. We stopped to take a look at the building and the progress of the work. They started this project last year when we bought our house and are slowly getting around to putting in an electrical system and finishing the walls. We had a quick consultation with the mason. He is going to come by the house next week to give us an estimate.
We drove the thirty or so miles to Azay. It is in the department next door, Indre-et-Loire (we are Maine-et-Loire). By the time we got there it was time for lunch. We walked around a little, looking for a place to have lunch that wasn’t too touristy (or full of Brits). We found a café on the square where the old market is. There is also an old church dedicated to Saint Blaise. The façade had carved statues of Christ and the twelve apostles (great name for a band). Inside the market hall there was an art exhibition of drawings and paintings by locals; in America it would be referred to as County Fair Art.
For lunch Timmy and Rich ordered the 11€ “formule” which was an Andouille sausage. They thought they were getting something similar to the American sausage of the same name but when it came they were confronted by something that was basically the same as chitterlings. They were not very happy. Lots of wine, water and coffee failed to wash out the taste of pig’s pee.
We made our way to the chateau. The castle was begun in the 16th century by a royal tax collector. Before it was finished he had been accused of corruption and was executed. The building and lands were given to a war buddy of the king who finished it in an Italianate style. By the end of the 19th century the owners were fallen on hard times. They sold the castle and all the furniture to the State who refurbished it.
From the front the castle seems very imposing. It is surrounded by a moat, probably fed by the Indre River. Inside, the original furnishings are still in place. The woodwork and stone carvings are very impressive. But the overall feeling is of a doll’s house. A walk around the outside confirms that it is small, certainly smaller than the chateau of Montsoreau.

AZAY-LE-RIDEAU: VISITE VIRTUELLE

THIZAY DOLMEN

We got a late start today. Karen invited us over to
La Blanchière for lunch. We were on our way when Rich remembered that the dessert we were supposed to bring was still sitting on the kitchen table. They left me off in Thiezay and drove back to Montsoreau.
Thizay is a very small community tucked into the hills above the Vienne River. There is a church, started in the 12th century, rebuilt in the 15th, renovated in the 19th, in the main plaza, but it was closed. There was a statue of St. Michael above the door so I think it must be the Eglise St-Michel. I followed the road behind the church. I wanted to find the dolmen. I wasn’t sure where I was going until I saw a sign – “Rue du Dolmen”, which made me think I was on the right track. I followed the winding road up the hill stopping only to fill my pockets with the bright yellow and orange plums I found in an open field (I made sure to taste the ripeness of a good many of them first!).
About a kilometer up the road I found the dolmen sitting on a ridge to the left of the road. There were several oak trees behind it (no rowan tree). The dolmen itself consisted of three kerbstones, two in front and one behind, with a massive capstone on top. A smaller capstone was beside it but it wasn’t clear to me if there had originally been two dolmen or if the whole structure was part of a court tomb or passage grave. I climbed up on top of the capstone to get a better view of what the dead had to look out at for 3 or 4 millennium: mixed forest, the river, the nuclear power plant at Avoine.
I took a quick look around the neighborhood. There were mostly fields of grapes, probably cabernet franc or pinot noir, and thick hedgerows of blackberries that were not quite ripe yet.
MORE PICTURES OF THIZAY

WHAT IS A DOLMEN?

JEAN-FRANÇOIS AT THE CAFÉ FRANÇAIS

Jean-François is the owner of the Café Français, a hip bar in Chinon tucked away on a side street off the Place de General de Gaulle. He has live music almost every weekend. We usually end up here in the late afternoon for a quite glass of wine before heading home.
The Café Français has a website where you can get more information about who is playing there and the other activities that take place there (There is a knitting group that meets here regularly, for instance).

TIMMY AND HELEN IN MONTSOREAU

Timmy and Helen are here in Monsoreau for a little visit of about a week. They had some adventures in getting here. There was no problem on the Ryanair flight from Dublin to Nantes (except for the 2km walk to the gate at Dublin Airport) but the journey to Saumur was more difficult. They came on a Saturday when there are less trains coming from Nantes to Saumur. They also found out that the shuttle from the airport to the train station is not as frequent on Saturdays. They had to take a bus to the tram line which took them to the centre of the city, then another tram to the train station. They had missed all the TGV’s for that day so they had to wait hours for a train coming from Quimper on its way to Geneva that was stopping in Nantes and also in Saumur. It was a sleeper train and also had four or five double decker loads of new cars, probably being delivered to Paris.
They finally arrived at 10:15 in Saumur. We had already called a restaurant in Saumur centre-ville, “Le Grand Bleu” to see if they would still be open but of course they had already stopped serving at 10. So we decided not to take any more chances. We went directly to the restaurant closest to the train station, “Le Case Creole”, a restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Reunion, the “French” island in the Caribbean. When we arrived there were still a whole lot of people there but when we left we closed the place behind us. Besides the food (shrimp in Reunion sauce, curried beef, halibut in a lime sauce, basmati rice and lentils) the waiter, a wonderful Reunionnaise, brought us a digestif of cinnamon-infused rum served in little glass jugs. What an experience!

RUES ET RUELLES

Pictures of the street signs in Montsoreau.

YVES DUTEIL CONCERT IN CHATEAU

Wikipedia article about Yves Duteil

VICHY, C’ETAIT AUSSI LA FRANCE?

I go to the local “tabac” every morning to buy the newspaper. I usually buy “Le Monde” but occasionally I will also buy another paper to see the difference in style. I find I can read “Liberation” without too much trouble but the colloquial language of “Figaro” is harder for me to understand.
“Le Monde” has published a number of articles in the last few weeks that are lighter fare for the summer. Right now there is a series about different world airports and their role in “mondialisation”. Today, Moscow’s three airports were featured, yesterday it was London’s Heathrow, and before that articles about Lagos and Amsterdam. Two weeks ago there was a series about the great battles that shaped various religions – Kerbala for the Shiites, Jerusalem for the Christians, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain for Catholics, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre for the Protestants of France, and the slaughter of Hindus by Muslims, Muslims by Hindus that led to the partition of India (really, the partition of the Punjab and Bengal).
Today, as part of the series “Rétrocontroverse” there is an article retracing the discussion between Chirac and Mitterrand about the culpability of the French State in the deportations and murder of French Jews. Chirac argued the neo-Gaullist line that the Vichy State was criminally responsible for these murders but that France was redeemed by the triumph of DeGaulle and the Liberation. Mitterrand argued that the Vichy state was not a part of France, the true France of the Republique. In fact, that state was the collaborator of the Nazis and therefore the enemy of France. He argued that the Republique didn’t need to apologize for anything since it was an equal victim with the Jews.
I’m not sure what I think about this discussion. It seems there are doubts about Mitterrand the Socialist and his commitment to a France free of anti-Semitism. Conversely, Chirac the Gaullist is championing the revisiting of a sordid episode in French history. Either way, it doesn’t seem to me that the crimes of the French State, whether Vichy or Free, are to the forefront of the political discussion around racism and immigration in modern day France. Can France truly deal with its present if it hasn’t even begun to deal with its past?

TIFFANY

Tiffany came by with Karen and Nico to say goodbye. She is heading up to Paris on Saturday, and then flying home to Chicago on Sunday. Nico took this picture of us standing in our kitchen. They all had an impromptu dinner with us.
Tiffany is Karen’s niece by marriage – her dad married Karen’s sister after he divorced Tiffany’s mom (I think I have that right). Tiffany is 19 and has completed one year of college in Chicago. She has spent the summer being Karen’s au pair, looking after Nico while Karen is away leading the bike tours that she manages for Butterfield and Robinson. She arrived in May, a shy, unassertive American with a little French. She is leaving as a confident young woman who has learned how to handle herself in a foreign country. Along the way, she has become quite competent in French and has a self-confidence that was hard come by working with Karen and Nico in the house and preparing the lunches for up to 20 cyclists at a time.
Unfortunately, because of Karen’s schedule and Tiffany’s commitment to her job we didn’t get to spend as much time with her as we would have liked to. We did have one memorable day out in Loudon, memorable because it rained, that we enjoyed spending with her without Nico. Maybe next year we will spend more time together now that she knows how to manage Karen.
Goodbye for now, Tiffany. Perhaps we will see you in California during the winter.

OLD POSTCARD OF MONTSOREAU c.1850

Our neighbors, Les Racinet, gave us a copy of this old photograph which clearly shows our house. The one story building to the left of our house was once the village blacksmith's forge. It is now the Racinet's garage.

THE WALLS

We have been stripping the walls of the wallpaper to see what might be behind it. Removing wallpaper, even under the best of conditions, is a very messy undertaking. We have spent about three days at it and have successfully removed all the wallpaper from the first floor bedrooms. We found several layers of wallpaper and in some places there was even newspaper, which I guess they used to create an even surface for the wallpaper.
We started this project after being invited next door by Les Racinet (the neighbors in #16) to see the kinds of restoration they have done in the ten years they have owned their house. We saw how beautiful the tuffeau stone is when it is protected in the interior of a house. Metta encouraged us to explore our own house to see what treasures lay behind the wallpaper.

We also had a chance to see the inside of another house across the street. A gentleman came to the door to welcome us to the town. He introduced himself (don’t remember his name) and invited us across the street to meet his “amie” (whose name we didn’t catch either). She told us that she was cleaning out the house of her mother who had died earlier this year. She was getting it ready for her daughter who would be using it as a weekend retreat from Paris. She showed us how thick the walls are and the stairway to the first floor and the grenier (attic). She speculated that her house was probably built in the 16th century. She showed us a built over archway and said the house was probably built as a chapel but was never finished.

What did we find? We found two walls that are entirely tuffeau stone. We will have very little to do to make that look fine. The back wall of the house and the end wall appear to a combination of tuffeau stone and fieldstone. There are some areas where there clearly was a window or door in the past and that was filled with fieldstone and plastered over. In these areas we will have to remove the old plaster and have a craftsman mason replace the mortar between the joints in a way that leaves the stone largely exposed but nicely finished.

GWEN’S CALL

We are sitting in one of our favorite places in Chinon – the Café Français. Rich just gets through saying that he will take Gwen here when she comes to visit, that it is exactly her kind of place. He is thinking of the ambiance, the Frenchness of it, as well as the really good music they have playing in the background. We are lounging in very comfortable leather chairs quaffing our glasses of red Chinon wine. The band is setting up for a live performance of New Orleans style zydeco later that night. Suddenly his phone rings. Guess who is calling?

COUPE DE CHEVEUX

We went to have our hair cut in Chinon. We go to a barber who only works with men. He can speak a little English but he refuses to allow us – we have to speak in French in his shop. Today, I asked him about the actor, Michel Serreult, who recently died. That started him talking about the great actors of the past. He continued with a treatise on the French actors who have appeared in Hollywood movies. Then he moved on to jazz and the world of great blues singers and musicians who had lived in Paris during the 1950s. All the time we have to stay engaged - he asks questions to make sure we understand. Our haircut turns into a French lesson. Towards the end he reminds us that we have had a haircut, not a horsescut. Our pronunciation has a long way to go yet.

SHOUT OUT TO MISS PEGGY

Dearest, Darling Peggy:

We hope you are feeling a little better after your recent health scare. You know we love you and hope you get better soon. We are praying for you (in our own way) and lit a candle for you at the church of Notre Dame des Ardilliers in Saumur (even though you are Pentecostal and not Catholic – God will hear our prayer, nonetheless).

Rich and Máirtín

NOTRE DAME DES ARDILLIERS

We have been whizzing past this church for the past couple of weeks trying to figure out when it is open. We visited this place five years ago when we first came to this area with Vladimir but we had forgotten why it is such a special place. Finally, tonight on our way home from a day of checking things out in Saumur we noticed the door was open and figured out that we could stop and visit.
Inside is a splendid church. An Italianate dome added in the 17th century and rebuilt after the Battle of Saumur in 1940 is the setting for a rotunda of eight smaller chapels. Above the chapels were eight medallions showing images of the four Evangelists and the four Doctors of the Church. Beyond this antechamber was the nave with a high alter that depicted the Crucifixion. To the left of this main alter was a smaller altar dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu and to the right another altar that had a large scene of the Flight into Egypt (pyramids and palm trees included).
The history of this church is particularly interesting. The church was built where a “Pieta” statue was found and an ancient spring gushed out of the hillside. In the 15th century the statue became the centre of a cult and the church that was built to house it became a major pilgrimage site. Later as the cult grew in importance the church was patronized by powerful people and became a royal chapel. Saumur grew rapidly during the period following the Edict of Nantes but after the king revoked the Edict half of Saumur’s population, the Huguenots, fled the city and a period of stagnation and poverty befell the city. During the Revolution the church was ransacked and priests of the parish were guillotined. Then the greatest tragedy of all: the bombing and firestorms of the Battle of Saumur that destroyed the rotunda and cupola.
For now, all the wars are over for this beautifully restored church. It was such a pleasure to drop our one euro piece into the box to turn on the lights in the nave. Around the rotunda is an inscription dedicated to the Virgin by “Ludivocus XIV. Dei Gratia Franc. Et Navar Rex.”, a reminder that Louis XIV, The Sun King, was present here as a child.

FONTEVRAUD, L'ABBAYE ROYALE

A scorching hot day. Anna and Jag were leaving in the evening to go back to Paris. They are flying back to the States on Monday. We decided to visit the abbey of Fontevraud early in the morning while it was still relatively cool.
When we got there I noticed a sign for a new annual pass that they are offering. The usual price of entry is 7.90 euro but for 12 euro we can go anytime we like for a whole year. What a deal!
I hadn’t been inside the abbey in more than five years. We headed straight for the kitchens, the beehive structure with the fish scale roof. Inside the octagonal building there are eight fireplaces and chimneys – an indication of the numbers of people that the abbey served every day.
We walked around, soaking in everything: the huge refractory or dining hall, the cloistered gardens, the main church with the graves of Henry and Elinor, Richard and Isabelle. The abbey is vast, the biggest abbey in France. When you are inside the walls you definitely get the sense of what it was like for a young women to enter and never leave, to pass her whole life in that world of women and God, cut off from the world of temptation and the Devil outside the walls.
At the mortuary chapel I read the account of how a dying nun was laid out on a bed of ashes to remind her that she came from dust and would return to dust after her soul went to Heaven. This account solved a problem that I had been trying to resolve in my own mind – why does the mortuary chapel that Karen bought have a chimney? The oven and chimney are used to create the ashes that the dead body is laid out on before burial, a critical part of the faith of the Plantagenets and the people who lived at that time in this part of France.
There is an exhibition at the abbey, “Heros et Merveilles”, that gives a good account of what life was like for most people in the Middle Ages.

CANDES-St MARTIN

Rich was meeting Duncan in Chinon to go pick up the box springs for our new “French” beds. Duncan has a big pickup truck that could easily accomadate the double bed sized box springs. We left Rich off with Duncan at the Hotel Sans Souci with its glowing orange plastic palm tree. It was so hot, maybe 30ºC. The girls didn’t feel like hanging around Chinon, especially since most things were closed on Sunday. We decided to go back to Montsoreau and hang out. Along the way I stopped in Candes to show them the church.
The church is built on the spot where Saint Martin is reputed to have died. It was built in the 12th century. The headless figures in the entry porch are evidence of the ferocity of the wars of religion in this part of France.
It was interesting to be in this church with a Sikh and a Hmong person, who although Christian is from a culture that is shamanistic and animist. The images and iconography were very familiar to me; they tell a story that makes sense in the context of Christian mythology. But for Anna and Jag they seemed very foreign to their experience. Later, while we were having a drink in the café at the train station, we had a good discussion about the nature of faith and why people believe what they do.

SAUMUR WALKABOUT

Saturday in Saumur. The girls wanted to do some shopping before they have to go home. They are taking the train back to Paris on Sunday then flying home on Monday. Anna will be back at work on Tuesday.
Rich wanted to go across the river to a brocante, a kind of antique store cum junk store, but everything is closed in the country until 2 for lunch. We wandered down to the Saint Nicholas district to have lunch. I ordered a salad with a “white sauce” and Rich ordered a burger and fries. The salad was more like a soup, canned vegetables like peas and corn mixed with small cubes of white cheese, all floating in the white sauce. I should read the menu descriptions more carefully next time. Rich’s medium rare burger was very rare, blood rare, and had to be sent back for further cooking.
After lunch I took a walk around Saumur by myself while Rich went to the brocante. I saw a sign for an exhibit of tapestries in the Chapelle Saint Jean. I followed the signs to a little 12th century church that had steps down from the street level. The church was originally built by the Hospitalers of Saint John of Jerusalem then later it belonged to the Knights of Malta. It had a typically rectangular form – the Plantagenet style.
There were 5 large tapestries divided into 19 panels. The tapestries told the story of Saint Florent and Saint Florian, two brothers who defied the edicts of the pagan emperors Deocletian and Maximian and continued to worship the Christian god. They were arrested, tried, and sentenced to torture and drowning for their faith. While they were being tortured an angel descended from the heavens to save Floriant but poor old Floran was drowned in the river. Florent traveled to Candes to receive holy orders from Saint Martin then went on to found a monastery on a hilltop just outside Saumur. I wondered why the angel didn’t deliver Florian.
The tapestries were very detailed, many of the panels had a main image and several smaller images that added to the story. Also, they were in remarkably good shape, given that they were used at one point as covers for birdcages.

L’ART DU BAROQUE

We bought tickets for a concert of Baroque music at our local church, Saint Pierre de Rest. The church is only open one Sunday a month for mass so this was a good opportunity to see the interior as well as to hear some good music.
It seemed like the whole village had turned out for the concert. The church is small so we had to sit on benches a distance from the action. In front of us our neighbors, Christian and Metta Racinet, were sitting in all their finery.
The church itself was built in two phases – the rectangular floored nave was built in the 12th century and had rounded windows reminiscent of the Romanesque period. The transept was more ornate with columns and Gothic style windows. That part was added in the 14th century. There were two side altars, one dedicated to Saint Peter. The church has been recently restored. The tuffeau stone has that “well-scrubbed” look that makes it seem to glow. Apart from the Stations of the Cross there wasn’t very much of visual interest on the walls.
The concert was a performance of vocal music by Vivaldi, Farinelli, Scarlatti, and Handel performed by a singer named Alexis Vassiliev. He was accompanied by Mario Raskin playing the clavichord who also performed some pieces by himself at the start of the recital.
At the end of the concert the audience was invited to take a glass of refreshment in the little place to the side of the church. The organizers were serving champagne of the region. We had a taste before heading home.

JAG AND ANNA

We picked up Jag and Anna from the train station in Saumur. They have been traveling around Europe by bus for the past three weeks. They flew into Rome from San Francisco on Air Canada then headed to Nice, Madrid, San Sebastien, and Paris with a bus company called Busabout (busabout.com) that allows for set down and pick up travel between major European cities. Their ticket allows them make six stops so they went back to Paris from Spain by bus then took the train down to the Loire Valley for a short visit with us.
We took them back to Montsoreau to leave off their stuff then drove together to Chinon. Rich and I had to go to a big store on the edge of Chinon (the Bon’AFF) so we left them to explore Chinon by themselves for a while. Later we met up with them for afternoon drinks at a funky bar called the Café Français on a backstreet behind the Hotel de Ville. They had many stories to tell of their travels. Jag is a Punjabi Sikh from Yuba City in Northern California. She attracts the attention (usually unrequested) of every Indian bachelor looking for a mate. Her traveling companion, Anna, is a Hmong woman originally from Southern California (her family fled Laos in the mid-70’s during the ethnic cleansings that followed the triumph of the VietCong and the PathetLao). Anna told us of one young fool at a disco in San Sebastien who showed his affection for her by biting her arm!
In the evening we took them to the Baroque music concert at our local 12th century church then had a wonderful walk around the village at midnight when all the righteous villagers were snug in their beds.

DONEGAL PORTRAITS

This is Klara from Germany, by way of the Czech Republic and Iran, who wouldn't let me post her picture to my blog last year but gave me permission to post it this year.

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