Still Missing

The Guardian published a fairly harsh review of the Tim Minchin Comedy prom.  It reads, to me, like the reviewer was out to get him and settle old scores.  To the extent that he doesn't even mention Concerto Populare, despite the fact that it comprised a major part of the second half. 

It feels like all memories of Hoffnung are rapidly disappearing...

Fig

A smashing fig tree in the entrance to the Harris Girls Academy on Homestall Road.

Aquarius Festival

The Aquarius golf course is a small nine-hole course above the covered Aquarius reservoir in Nunhead.  We used to own a flat looking over it, but we'd never been inside the grounds. 

So we went along to the Festival & Fun Day" yesterday when it stopped raining.

This was the panoramic view from the clubhouse terrace (which makes it sound posher than it is).

And the odd close-up

The crowds weren't huge, probably because of the rain earlier in the day.  But we hung around for Steve Bolton's excellent rock and roll guitar stylings.

He really is very good, and his CV  includes playing with The Who and many other old rock greats. I once sat listening to him play in Page 2 when Jude Law came in (special, like) and proceeded to buy drinks for, and dance with, everyone in the pub.

Paris 2: Louvre, d'Orsay, Pantheon

After Notre Dame, we had a tour up and down the Seine followed by supper in the Latin Quarter.  The next day we were up early (on advice) and headed for the Louvre.

The reason for going early was to avoid the crowds heading for the Mona Lisa.

 

So that worked well.

 In fact, the galleries were crowded all around the painting.

So we headed for a quieter, less famous Leonardo:

We had intended merely a quick whistlestop, 'smash and grab' raid on the Louvre, just a quick look at one or two famous old masters and out.  Instead we got seduced, and wandered around quite a number of galleries looking at stuff.  And such stuff!

But the other star of course, is the Louvre itself - particularly the new, underground spaces beneath the Pyramid - the connecting areas which pull it all together.  Absolutely marvellous.

After the Louvre we wandered through the Jardin des Tuileries...

...and then over the new footbridge (at least I don't recall it from last time) to my favourite art gallery - the Musée d'Orsay.  And I do mean the gallery of all those that I've been to that I love the most of all, anywhere.

It isn't just that it is housed in a refurbished and repurposed railway station (so much more romantic than Tate Modern's power station), nor the sumptuousness of the original building.  It is mostlly the art.  All those impressionists and post-impressionists.  Favourite Monets, Manets, Cezannes and Van Goghs.  Whistlers Mother (that isn't its real title).  Delacroix, Daumier, Rousseau, Millet (a new fave), Courbet, Renoir, more Monet, Pissarro, Caillebotte, Sisley, Degas, Berthe Morisot, Redon.  And Seurat, Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Bonnard, Vuillard, Klimt and Munch.  Aaaah.

However, the gallery was going through a major refurbishment and rehang when we were there (just finished  now, according to the Web site), so all of the most famous works - and very many of those I most wanted to see - were on temporary display.  ALL IN THE SAME CORRIDOR.  We had thought the Louvre was crowded, but that was nothing to the number of people in that corridor.

But I ignored them all and enjoyed myself hugely in my favourite arty space.  (Hence no photos).

The Panthéon was new to me: 

According to Wikipedia:

"It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens."

Which is fair enough, but doesn't really convey the overwhelming French Nationalism that pervades the state.  This is a cathedral to secular male Frenchness.  The state and its instruments.

 

The building is huge, and awesome in its own right.  The statues and other memorials scattered around it are large in themselves but can seem overwhelmed by the place.  We wandered and pondered.

 Diderot, famous for the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.

Apparently one of Foucault's first pendulums was originally set a-swinging in the Pantheon, although this is a replica.  The original bob he used then is at the the Musée des Arts et Métiers - as any reader of the Eco novel will (of course!) recall.

The latin apparently translates to "Christ tells the Gallic angel to guard the fate of the fatherland" - very much in keeping with the nationalistic and patriotic tone of the place.

 Georges Guynememer I believe, a WWI flying ace.

 Statue to the glory of "La Convention Nationale".

The author of The Little Prince.

And I've missed out all the others, like Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Carnot, Emile Zola, the Curies and Dumas pere.  Many of whom are buried in the crypt underneath.

So anyway, after that we wandered down to the Latin Quarter and had a cheap supper in a kebab shop... Very French!

A Question of Protocol

I'm confused.  What is the correct response when your eldest says he has lent all your Tom Lehrer CDs to his new girlfriend?

Paris 1: Notre Dame

The reason for a lack of posts in the second half of July is that we were on holiday in Paris.

We went out by Eurostar, which was fine.  But then the damn hotel we'd booked with (the Pavillon Republique les Halles just off of the Boulevard de Magenta) moved us to a different hotel in the same chain (because of 'flooding on the fifth floor' or some such problem). I have to say we thought they were lying, it was the weekend of the end of the Tour de France, and we suspected they had an overbooking problem. Anyway we ended up further out at the Pavillon Péreire Arc de Triomphe - which despite its name and their claims is not near the Arc.  It is out beyond Wagram, quite near the Peripherique.

So we ended up spending more money and time on the Metro than we intended, and our efficient detailed daily plans went out of the window.  Still, we did what we could and had fun.

The first day included a trip to Notre Dame.  I'd forgotten about the details of the frieze above the door:

Each person is judged, and those condemmed to Hell are led off to the right by a learing Devil, to suffer horrible tortures.

Although I think that the cathedral doesn't look its best from the front.  From other angles the fantastic, ornate flying butresses can be seen...

But who are these strange green beings?

Missing

Well.  I enjoyed the 'Comedy Prom' on the radio last night.  But there was a a name missing.  They played Franz Reizenstein's 'Concerto Popolare' (misspelt in some of the literature), and jolly good it was, too.  But, and but again, they could have noted that it was written for the first of the Hoffnung Concerts in 1956.  A piece of history - and a precursor - that they seemed to have forgotten.