Binic

Binic is a pretty seaside satellite of St Brieuc, about 40 minutes from us. It used to be a significant fishing port, especially in the 19th century, when the fishing boats regualrly sailed from here to Iceland and Newfoundland, to catch cod to be made into salt cod - morue.

Now it's mostly a pleasure port, the last major fishing activity, for scallops - coquille st Jacques, having relocated to nearby Saint Quay.

Yet , despite the prettiness of the place, the boat traffic is pleasantly low-key, no floating gin-palaces here, mostly just simple sailing boats,

often quite old, wooden ones.

with their jolly hotchpotch of mostly plastic little tenders,

one of which looked to have been painted by Jackson Pollack.

We smiled at the name of this rather large and utilitarian looking boat, la Fée de l'Aulne; not very fairylike, we thought. She had charm though, not least in the spick-and-span, shipshape domesticity, the clothes horse of yellow oilskins airing on the foredeck,


the motley shapes and colours of her functional details,

and, perhaps most of all, in her very thoughtful looking ship's dog.

Later research showed that la Fée is in fact a very special vessel indeed. Last of the wooden barges built in the region, some fifty years ago, and still capable of being propelled by sail, she is officially classed as a Historic Monument. She was decommisioned in the year 2000, prior to which she was still being used to carry cargo, bought by passionate enthusiasts, and restored with the help of grants. She was used to haul building materials between the western islands off Britanny, and her draft was so wondrously shallow, that she frequently carried the maerle, the limey mix of shell and sand from the coast used to sweeten the fields and market gardens of the interior, a long way up the river Aulne, which flows into the sea at Brest, and along the Nantes-Brest Canal. Hence her name, she could pass as if by sorcery where no other could!

We sometimes daydream about one day taking our final retirement here, in a tiny shipshape appartment, all passion, for gardening, house renovation and large green spaces, spent. Conceivably, by that time, four bedrooms, three acres, a view of dozens of kilometres into Ile-et-Vilaine, and twenty-plus years of hard graft might buy us two rooms and a window-box in Binic. Then we think about just what, and who, we will have lost, given up and let go to reach that point, and it's too heartbreaking to bear thinking about.

So we come here occasionally, usually to have lunch at the Nord-Sud (I love restaurant websites, and this one's got their cute puffin logo, go on, have a look!), which must really include coquillages farcies, succulent bivalves - clams, scallops, and mussels - smothered in slightly alarmingly green garlic and parsley butter and grilled very hot. This is the first time Tom has ventured to eat shellfish since his operation, indeed, since the bout of illness which preceded it, which seemed to be precipitated by a meal of moules marinières. Though he will probably not eat that particular dish again, the grilled ones were a resounding success, and had no ill effects.

Then, while he digests his lunch with a book, Molly and I and the camera take a stroll around the harbour.

Though the place is prosperous and quite chic, the sea and the salt and the weather takes their toll, in rusted surfaces,

and algal bloom and residue,

and cracked and porous masonry.

As I stood fingering the camera, and wondering about the window boxes of this shabby appartment, with their yellowing prickly pears and straggling hottentot fig, a woman passed behind me, larger, older, more imposing than myself. I held off framing the shot, feeling self-conscious, and moved on, passing her again, and quickly photographed the great rusty mooring ring in its lichenous granite bed.

When I looked behind me, she had taken out a DSLR, also larger and more imposing than my camera, and was photographing the same object. Momentarily, I felt an impulse to make contact, even to ask if she blogged or Flickred her pictures, but decided against the intrusion. She stood looking at it, occasionally lifting the camera to shoot, but mostly just looking, for several minutes. I admired her contemplative discipline, or perhaps she was wondering whether to scramble down the rock and remove the ugly piece of orange plastic tat that was adhering to the ring, or to include it in the picture, or to edge it out of the frame as I have, which, on reflection was by far the least courageous option.

The harbour wall is of pink and grey granite, and orange sandstone, an architectural sampler of the geology of the region. It is presumably 19th century, a larger, more modern and rectilinear cousin to the Cobb at Lyme Regis, which endears it to me.

I am taken with its various patterns and geometries.

and on the beach below, turnstones, caught between summer and winter plumage, do as their name suggests, busy and fairly unconcerned by our attentions.

Looking out to the wilder beach beyond, there are, as there always are on any seashore, solitary, contemplative women. I always wanted to become one of these, still do. Perhaps I have done, some of the time. The one below, on examination of the photo, however, appeared to be less contemplative than foraging, she has a bag and is picking over the mussel-strewn rocks and pools.

Foraging, contemplating. To everything a season...

Sensory: muguet, and more.

Our lily of the valley is still just brandy-snap curls of green leaf pushing through the earth, but Victor's is in a sunny spot by the concrete wall of his barn, and is flowering already, there'll be plenty for Fête de Travail.

I nipped off a sprig and threaded it through the eyelet at the neck of my t-shirt; the perfume accompanied my walk, and grew headier as it wilted. I still have the dry brown remains, and they still smell beautiful. How can something so small generate so much scent?

How can you describe scent? How can you write about the wonder, the shock of spring flowers, without triteness? What about

'why is it that the Spring flowers seem
like bits of the world refocusing
when the brain wakes from an anaesthetic?'

('From-here-to-there Portal', from Lucas - brother of Plutarch).

And while we're on sensory, nay, sensual, delights, I can't get over this one from Michelle at Peony Moon. There's all manner of wondrous verse to be found all over, I know, but every now and then something really hits the spot, and this is a feast. I challenge you to read it without your mouth watering. (Tarantella, just before it, is marvellous too.)

A couple of announcements.

I don't normally do this sort of thing, and I don't know whether I actually have many local readers, with the exception of Rosie/Gillian, who usually knows much more about everything that's going on round here than I do anyway, but in case there are any of you lurking out there, can I give a plug to an event in our local town, Moncontour(-de-Bretagne), the theme of which is celebrating said town in pictorial form?

I haven't yet met Barry Herniman, but he's a friend of some good friends of ours here, and he's spent getting on for a couple of years preparing an exhibition of what promise to be truly gorgeous watercolours, which will take place over the next three days - Friday 17th to Sunday 19th April. In fact even if you're nowhere near this neck of the woods or ever likely to be, I would still recommend visiting his website , or his blog, even, (which I didn't know he had...), and spend some time just basking in his luminous and evocative paintings, land- and seascapes, which seem to me to do everything that watercolours should do.

Moncontour is an unfeasibly picturesque place, which I've never really posted about because I don't quite know how to photograph it without producing a series of picture postcards, and then I might be tempted to completely debase myself by rendering them in sepia or something. I keep saying to myself that I will park the car at the top of the hill and risk my neck walking down the narrow and vergeless hairpin bend to take the shot of the ramparts which Barry has shown in the poster, since just at this moment the big magnolia tree is in bloom up there, but the period of flowering is short, and I probably won't get around to it. His dedication to his art is very clearly much greater than mine.

There's also going on at the same moment a tasting of Cornish pasties and curry at the Frog and Rosbeef, the town's amusingly named Anglo-French culinary establishment (she's English, he's French), which I understand has been well taken-up by hungry expats suffering from gastronomic nostalgie de pays (yes, it does happen... I wonder if they'll have any ginger beer?), so if you're there for that, don't hesitate to go along to the expo during the morning too.

~~~

Blowing my own trumpet now, I've posted my response to Joe's question 'Qui custodiet ipsos custodes? ' which is to say, who will police the policemen? over at Compasses.

We have been talking about how we have both expressed a degree of unease, a sense of fear or constraint, about merriment, smiling laughter. Joe has a gaoler in his head, I find a figure pops up in my mind who seems to represent something murderous and diabolic, if entertaining. Yet we are not like this, are we? I ask. It's rather interesting what comes up. To put it a little glibly, the human condition being what it is, joy cannot be unbridled. 'Smile,' says Joe 'but not without the reflex of a distant sadness.'

In response to one or two queries. The 'who said what?' element, is we think, adequately supplied by the 'posted by' label at the bottom of each post. Can we show the workings? Nah, probably not. Joe thinks it's like letting your guests into the kitchen when you're cooking. I have an open plan kitchen diner arrangement; it's nice, but sometimes I wish I didn't. Also, in the Google document we use, unless one makes an effort to keep everything, it's fugitive; we simply erase and overwrite. The rest of the collaboration is by e-mail, and we'd have to sift out anything that might be of interest from the inevitable chitchat about planting lettuce seeds and what we had for lunch. But thanks, so much, for the interest and support. It would have been worth doing if no one had read it, but there's nothing like a bit of positive interest and praise to lift one up!

Sensory - Sun

Wearing black
Sun on your back...

More Questions and Answers

Joe's just put up his response to the question 'Are you smiling?' at the Compasses blog; I'll post my response to the question he finshes with in the next day or so...

Sensory: tastables.

(Those are peppercorns that were his eyes...)

He's happy now, but his futile attempts at vegetative propagation, in a net under the stairs, will not save him from his fate, which is to be peeled, boiled, rolled in dry semolina flour, and roasted in duck fat. As an accompaniment to the Easter Day roast, chicken with...

... yellow peppers and yellow cherry tomatoes, well stuffed with garlic and sprinkled with parsley and paprika. I came across the idea of using yellow peppers for Easter years ago, as a healthy way of introducing the yellow of egg-yolk, butter, daffodils and general springiness into the dish. I like roasting chicken on a bed of soft vegetables; anything goes: peppers, aubergine, celery or celeriac, salsify (the stuff in tins or jars that tastes of nothing but absorbs the chicken flavours wonderfully), whatever. I also added onion - Roscoff pinks, of course - and courgettes. The potatoes have to roast separately, however, to be crisp.

And finally, how wonderful is the new toaster, here glowing in delicious promissory action. Three small white slices - grand Brié coupé - for Tom, two large malted brown ones for me, all ready at once. There's luxury!

~~~

Many thanks to Zhoen, for suggesting a sensory theme to help cure my slight photographer's block! This is going to be fun...

Three poems from a virus-struck time, and self-portraits in the new toaster. There doesn't have to be a point...

Feeling much better, thanks.

Three bits and pieces from the time.

Early

Thresheld, standing between the mist
and the brown, unleavened content
of the house, when a bird comes,
circles, its wings lapping slowly,
then resolves into the haze.

Morning myopic, blurred, its shape,
movement, nature, all slip
between my vision's fingers.

Grudgingly grateful, I accept
the gift of unknowing.

[Too many drafts, can't tell which is best. The curse of needing to know what birds are...]



Idling

Cutting nails by the bedroom window, dropping
the ragged crescents into the mauve plastic bin,
I enumerate my fingerprints: left,
three right loops, one to the left,
with an egregious whorl on the wedding ring finger;
right, four leftward loops and a double one right on the index.

My sight hops, skips and jumps out of the window,
to dug earth, tree and cloud shapes.


Honey and water

Honey and water, simple, a simple,
hotter and sweeter than blood.
Makes no claims, no demands
to heal, raise, restore, drive out the invader,
or furnish with riches, just offers
kindness.

~~~

The old toaster summarily threw the trip switch twice and was equally summarily dispatched to the waiting room for the déchetterie. The hot-cross buns for Friday's breakfast had to be grilled on the stovetop. It's replacement is twice the size, which means no more juggling keeping one batch hot while preparing the next.

However, when divested of its packaging, it proved to have a dent in its otherwise flawless stainless steel surface. Mild gnashing of teeth, but toast for the weekend was more important than driving all the way back to the supermarket to grumble about it.

And I became beguiled by the interesting distortions the dent produced, and tried to capture them.

I have dreamed a couple of times lately that I have forgotten the camera, left it behind somewhere. Absent minded and inclined to forget my head as I am, I never, touchwood, have been known to forget the camera, I take good care of it.

But I am forgetting to use it, or just not bothering with it as much. I am beset with the sense that either the pictures are pointless, or I've already taken them, there's nothing new. I toy with the idea of upgrading, getting something fancier, in the belief it will renew my motivation, which is probably a mistake.

I think the dreams may be saying I need to redress this, and take the pictures anyway, that I and the camera are missing one another. Hence daft pictures of dented toasters, and maybe other equally inconsequential things to come...

May as well be hanged...

...for a whole bunch of narcissus as a daffodil.

These are some which delight every year, but I haven't mentioned before. They are from an old bulb, from some that the old lady who owned this house before us had growing here and there in the vegetable patch beside the house. It's found a purchase in a patch of leaf-mould and run-off in a corner between a low kerb and the corrugated iron door of the garage we haven't yet got around to demolishing (the one I walk on to point the gable end of the house). Tom keeps saying he's going to dig them up and put them in the garden proper, but that hasn't yet happened, and in truth, I think the bulb is probably well lodged under the metal and wouldn't be easy to remove. In addition, there's the root system of a foxglove which flowers later in the year - you can see its leaves below the daffy, and the brown stalk coming up through the middle is last year's flower stem - and various things like herb robert and dandelion and sow thistle which join the party later.

It has grown and flourished over the years, and now always produces at least six flowers. With their tangerine trumpets and creamy petals, they are luminously pretty. Some years I just admire them where they are, and sometimes I cut them and bring them in, though I always leave the plant one of its own, to cherish and focus on, so as not to grieve, and also because cut flowers should always come in odd numbers

This year, seeing as how I'm not getting out to sample the joys of spring quite as much just at the moment, I cut them and put them on the table, with some of the others from the garden, some pink zebra grass and other bits and pieces, and some forget-me-nots which the Serious Gardener also considers to be misbehaving and misplaced upstarts, but for which, again, I plead mercy and a stay of execution.

Jocund company to be sure, and as Lucas pointed out, Narcissus has two faces; their wind-denying obverse side is almost as lovely as their open front face.

~~~

I have posted my reply to Joe's question over at Compasses.

Compasses reopens!

A year or so ago, Joe Hyam and I had a project over at our shared blog, 'Compasses', where I supplied photos to illustrate his cycle of 50 sonnets 'Handbook for Explorers'. Since this finished, the blog has been lying there gathering dust.

Late last year, we started another collaboration, only this time we each asked the other a question, then responded with a piece of writing. It began as a submission for qarrtsiluni's current 'Mutating the Signature' edition, but it didn't make it, and indeed, in the form it was then neither of us was really satisfied with it.

We cut it right down, changed it about, expanded it again, chopped more of it out, became distracted by good weather, bad health, doubt and uncertainty and other ideas and activities, edited and rewrote it some more, and now we have at last committed ourselves to doing something with it. We are both inveterate tinkerers and if we waited until we were both totally happy and sure about anything we'd never get anywhere. So it's now or never. Though we have an initial blueprint for it, it will change as we go along, and are not entirely certain how it will finish up.

As it stands now, Joe has posted a response to the question 'What do you know that I don't know?' I'll respond in the next 24 hours, then perhaps there will be a gap before the next response, etc. We'll see.

(The evident problem with publishing something like this in blog form, of course, is that it will unfold 'back to front', so will ned to be read from bottom to top, as it were... I'm sure you'll manage!)

Droop

Apologies, if anyone's in fact noticed, for the relative quiescence on the blogging front, in reading and commenting and otherwise engaging. We seem to have fallen foul of something rather 'flu-like, which I can push to one side for periods of time to do necessary things, but can't altogether seem to find my way through.

No matter, it is the Easter break now, and I am relatively free of obligations. And, as I often find with illness which is temporary and not severe, I have that feeling that there is something rather marvellous, peeled and tender and shining, waiting just on the other side of it, if only I could get there.

I did resolve to swear off daffodils this spring, with the fear of seasonal repetition and triteness that stalks this medium; but have broken with that resolve for a second time.

Molly is a very conscientious nurse, watching us with concern and draping or curling herself over and about the feet, legs or torso of whichever of us appears to be the most afflicted. In her own current state of lively health, she is rather missing out on her walks, though she usually gets something.

I am consuming as much ginger in whatever form possible (the French have a lamentable shortage of this in their general diet and range of available foodstuffs, so Whisky Mac and crystallised ginger in syrup rather have to be reserved for medicinal purposes, every cloud...) and have gulped down and finished reading 'Possession' for the second time, which was also delicious. I have now taken the rare step of bringing the computer - strictly speaking a laptop but a heavy and unwieldy one which doesn't take kindly to running on battery power, over to the sofa, so I'll try to get around some blogs now, and to posting something more constructive over the next day or so...