The power of word and image

The Daily Mail in 1896 became the first newspaper to combine the photographic image with that of the written language. The then innovative mixture of words and pictures, has over subsequent generations, become a familiar part of our cultural landscape.
I can't be without either.

There is an on-going debate about words and whether they actually exist. 
The argument is that the human brain sees them as a series of letter images. Over time we develop a library of rounded corners, horizontal and vertical lines and then mentally, match the features of what we are currently reading with those we have collected from the past.
The sequence gives us the word. 

Letter image or word, what amazes me is how much original material has survived from so long ago. Documents of considerable cultural, historical and political importance, such as the Magna Carta, the Book of Kells, the Declaration of Independence remain intact, and are priceless.  Whilst letters and diaries by key figures as well as ordinary people speak volumes about the issues and social conditions of the day. 

Technological innovation has played an important part in preserving the richness and diversity of our heritage. Without it much would have been lost. Shakespeare has much to thank Gutenberg for. Hardly any of his hand-written documents survive. Gutenberg's press undoubtedly contributed to Shakespeare's global standing as a literary superstar.

For They Shall Not Grow Old, New Zealand Director Peter Jackson, painstakingly restored silent film footage, turned black and white into colour and made life on the front during WW1 a very real and human affair.  

American filmmaker Ken Burns, is renowned for his documentary film work. During the nineties, the BBC showed his award-winning series The American Civil War. For some reason it was aired at midnight on Saturday evenings. The solution was to tape it and then watch it first thing Sunday morning. Eventually we bought the boxed set. A nine-part series, Burns uses contemporary cinematography in addition to thousands of archival photographs, paintings, letters, diaries, film and newspaper images set to music to teach people about the American Civil War. It took five years to produce.

Burns's latest documentary is an 18 hour,10 disc DVD about the Vietnam war. With his long-term collaborator, Lynn Novick, Vietnam took over ten years to make and is a masterclass in documentary film making. I've just finished watching it. 

A massive canvas, this isn't purely boom and bang. Instead, Burns uses his trusted archival style of image, word and music to explore the tumultous arena of American politics and the global unrest that engulfed the Vietnam war. There are interviews with witnesses - Americans who fought, CIA agents, Vietnamese combatants, civilians from the North and the South, journalists, family members.  

Vietnam provides a ground-up view of the every day, and the people who lived through it, 
as well as the stories of some who did not. It is complex. Ken Burns triumph is that his careful use of words and images have made it immediately understandable and powerfully unforgettable.

Seeing in the new year!

A new year, new ideas and resolutions.
First up, Tales from Cravant. Until a few years ago my blog appeared regularly, often daily, sometimes weekly, with shorter reads and longer reads. Then I stopped. Things happen. But the arrival of 2019 has brought with it the realisation that I've missed the process. So I'm resurrecting my blog.

Writing was for a long time part of my working life, speeches, copy for newspapers, magazines, brochures etc. I also enjoyed writing letters, long-hand only, never typed, sometimes with a fountain pen, sometimes a biro. Luckily I had a couple of pen pals who shared the same enthusiasm. The first, Aunt Dolly, lived in San Diego, the other, Helen, lived in Tel Aviv, although she spent a fair bit of time away in Europe. She and I met by chance whilst travelling in Canada and America.

On average we wrote four times a year on single sheet airmail paper. Not for the faint-hearted, because each fattish envelope that arrived in our respective mail boxes, contained 15 or 16 pages. I don't know how the others approached writing their letters or where they liked to write. Mine were always written at home, seated at the dining room table, which had good light coming in from the side. Each took a whole day to complete with time allowed, in between, for the mundane essentials. If the writing took time, so did the reading.

The act of placing a pen on paper is a huge commitment. There isn't the same pressure perhaps as writing commercially or completing an exam paper where the collection of words has the capacity to change your future, realising some dreams, undermining others, if thoughts aren't succinct enough or original enough. Writing a letter nonetheless carries a heavy responsibility of being entertaining as well as interesting. Blogs in this respect are the same.

Aunt Dolly and I were pen pals for at least twenty years. Eventually the arthritus in her hands made anything more than a single-sided letter, impossible, and that was painful enough. I kept writing as always, until finally she wasn't there to write to any longer. Helen and I kept writing to each other for nearly ten years after we met. I learnt much from her. Helen's last letter was long. 1995. She had been to the Rabin rally in Tel Aviv and was standing at the front embracing a young Arab man. Both had been inspired to believe that peace was possible. Minutes later, Rabin was murdered in front of them, by another Israeli, Yigal Amir. Helen walked back to her apartment and started a letter. This wanton act of destruction that she had witnessed, kept Helen writing through the night. I still have it. Twenty pages long.
I treasure it.

Giverny 1 - The little green bridge

Monet's garden at Giverny has been on our hit list for ages. For various reasons we never managed a visit, until a couple of weeks ago. We stayed for two days. What's more we landed on our feet with our accommodation. A French friend in Chinon who is an artist, has a long-time friend Sandrine, who is also an artist and a photographer, with a lovely chambre d'hôte. It's just slightly away from the centre of the village, and a mini Monet garden to relax in. We'd booked November last year for May this year, and while we were there Sandrine was taking bookings for the same period in 2016. 

Giverny is a very popular place. In fact the whole village is Monet-esque. It is very pretty and clearly well maintained. I'm assuming that strict regulations apply.

We arrived in Tuesday afternoon, made a sortie round the village to check where everything was and then arranged with Sandrine to go to the gardens first thing the next morning. Because of my photography she was able to organise a special pass so that I could go back after closing on Wednesday evening. If you are classified as an artist it is possible to go. But she had to book it for me and did. The rules meant that Mike couldn't come.

Wednesday morning:  Mike and I were outside the gardens waiting for the doors to open at 9.30am. The gardens have a lovely array of colours and textures and the planting is very interesting. It is a gorgeous place and definitely worth visiting. I'm pleased we went. However we weren't quite ready for the onslaught. Being realists we knew there'd be a lot of people, but even first thing it was pretty full. The ubiquitous tour groups and their guides are the main problem. Just too many of the them crowding the narrow pathways. They are oppressive and distracting. Negotiating round them is difficult. It can't be easy for the gardening staff either, who have to use the same pathways.

At Giverny you are not going to find the peace and tranquility in which Monet painted, and which ooze from his much loved and admired paintings. It isn't easy to just look either, not with the additional presence of the "selfie" fanatics who were sitting on the pathways and standing in the flowerbeds, looking at themselves rather than anything around them.

By 11am the gardens were heaving. Our timing was good to get into Monet's house. It's a delight. We were early in the queue, so went in quickly and then left soon after, as it was the last thing for us to see.

Giverny with its history, particularly that of the gardens, is a place that inspires. So it's no surprise to discover that there are over 500,000 visitors each year. The range of nationalities and languages on the day we went was really quite something. On the other hand those numbers, given the size of the gardens at Giverny, are problematic.

It is the same challenge for any place or event that has been turned into a tourist attraction, and just keeps piling people in. How do you ensure the quality of the experience for the individual? That's not straightforward either. We are all different, as are our expectations. For me it is simply not enough to say that I've been and so can cross it off my "to do list". I have to make a connection.  

Thanks to Sandrine, that connection came Wednesday evening. I went back into the gardens with my permit soon after the doors had closed, and found myself in there with just seven other people, as opposed to seven thousand.

I can only describe the experience as emotional. It was also a real privilege. The contrast was extreme with that of the morning. I headed immediately to the little green bridge and the lilypads. At that point no one else was there. To walk in complete tranquility around the lake, to stand in perfect and peaceful solitude on the green bridge, to look across and around with only natural sounds for companionship was quite simply, breathtaking. At one point I was shaking so much I could barely hold the camera steady and had to sit briefly to get my head in gear. The photos here are all from this second visit. The early evening light and the reflections were idyllic. It is undoubtedly my favourite time of the day. Such a moment. 
I only wish Mike could have been there.

About David

David

Back in December 2013, I wrote a piece about Mike's cousins David and Taffy Shearing. It was thanks to them particularly, that I returned from my first visit to South Africa in 1979, better informed than when I arrived. The blog served another purpose, which was to mark the passing of Nelson Mandela and included a Christmas letter to the family that Taffy had written - an account of the occasion where she met Nelson Mandela and the events surrounding it, which were far from ordinary. 

The blog this time marks the passing of David Shearing after a long battle with cancer.

David had a motto - "I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing that I can do or kindness I can show any human being, let me do it now and not defer it, for I shall not pass this way again."

David and Taffy lived this credo to the limit. They were passionate and committed to each other, to their shared interests, but also to doing what was right.  In a country like South Africa, during the apartheid days, this took considerable determination and courage.

I first met David and Taffy when they had their sheep farm Layton, which was in the karoo - an extraordinary landscape, tough semi-desert, vast, challenging, sometimes dangerous, endlessly fascinating, always majestic. It is South Africa's biggest eco-system.  I fell in love with the place and the cousins, and even though the family moved away some time ago, when Mike and I go back to South Africa, we always make a pilgrimage to the karoo.

Dinner, that first night of that first visit to Layton was a different affair for this London girl. 
David had been having problems with a porcupine. Although endearingly like an oversized hedgehog, said porcupine had been raiding David's vegetable patch and causing a certain amount of damage. David had had enough. The trial of wits took place in the early hours one morning a few days before, and the outcome arrived on a carving plate, fortunately without the quills. A delicious roast, served with squash. 

Life on a farm in the karoo was never easy. But with David and Taffy there was always energy to do more. Taffy when we first met was greatly into dyeing and weaving, probably doing the spinning as well. I use one of her cushions as a back prop while I'm typing. David was a karoo bird man. Even a small speck on the horizon could be immediately identified. But it was for his knowledge of karoo flowers that David was renowned. This led to a series of publications: Karoo-South African Wild Flowers Guide of which there are six volumes, but also the creation of a karoo flower walk at the Karoo National Park near Beaufort West. We walked that walk with David one time.

The karoo landscape wasn't the only trail of discovery to be mined. Family history proved irresistible. Taffy with her Welsh ancestry, David with his Anglo/Scottish ancestry, have led to an impressive family tree that spreads across many centuries and countries. I first saw the South African Shearing's family bible, back in the 80s. An enormous tome, that David's mother, Aunt Marge was attempting to update in her beautiful fountain-penned handwriting. Now of course through David and Taffy's perseverance the family tree is online. 

However it is probably their combined work on the South African war in the Cape Colony, that represents David and Taffy's greatest achievement. It is a true legacy and testament to their tenacity. They produced a series of books - the Cape Commando Series. Taffy did the writing and David the editing and marketing. The research was a real labour of love, stretching over many years. Ultimately together, they produced a new book entitled The Rebel Record the database for which had previously been used by Taffy in support of her dissertation for her doctorate -
The Cape Rebel of the South African War 1899-1902 - which she submitted and was awarded in 2004.

In the Dedication for her doctorate Taffy wrote:

"This thesis is dedicated to my husband, David, my true friend and life's companion. 
I am the most privileged of people to have written a thesis in an atmosphere of genuine encouragement and steadfast support. For this, my love, I am deeply grateful."

To Taffy, Eleanor, Michelle and all the family, this blog is dedicated to a wonderful human being whom we are privileged to have known.  For this we are deeply grateful.

Hilary and Mike

Domaine Noiré - C'est top!

We've often said how spoilt we are for good food and good wine in this part of France, and mentioned the conviviality that pervades daily life. Sometimes all three elements come together in one place. This is the experience at Domaine de Noiré, conveniently situated on our way in to Chinon.

Our first encounter with Domaine de Noiré and the owners Jean-Max and Odile Manceau, was at the Chinon Wine Fair (April) about five years ago. Since we moved here in 2013, we've got to know them quite well. It was their wines we took over to the UK as Christmas presents last year for family and friends. We went with neighbours to their first season of summer jazz, also in 2014, and we've shared a few evenings together. They are charming people. 

Jean-Max was until 2014, President du syndicat des vins de Chinon, a position he held for seventeen years and from 2010 until this year, President de la Fédération des Associations Viticoles d'Indre et Loire et de la Sarthe. He and Odile represent the best of their profession.They are lovers of the land and the grape, working in harmony with their environment to produce the most beautifully structured, smooth and balanced reds, whites, rosé and pétillant. 

The reputation of the Chinon appellation is firmly centre on its relationship with food. 
At Domaine de Noiré, the team has recognised the need for visitors to better understand the pairing of wine with food as well as the process of wine production. So they have developed a Wine Tourism programme, which offers various packages whereby visitors can discover the pleasure of Domaine de Noiré wines, local cuisine and other cultural delights.

Jean-Max studying the viennoiserie

We were very priviledged to be invited to the launch of the Wine Tourism programme last Thursday. The others guests were journalists, professional marketeers, wine experts and tourism specialists. We were there for various reasons, one of which was my involvement with the voluntary Greeters programme at the Tourism Office in Chinon. 

It was a morning affair which began around 9am at Domaine de Noiré, with coffee and viennoiserie. Jean-Max and Odile were perfect hosts. We each introduced ourselves to the rest of the group and chatted happily together before beginning our discovery of the Domaine's and Chinon's heritage. We had been told to wear something warm.

une calèche

We left by horse-drawn carriage/une calèche, a 22-seater pulled by Tino and Titeuf and made our way, so comfortably to the pier on the Vienne in the centre of Chinon. It's a great way to travel and the day was absolutely perfect for it. The calèche and horses belong to Domaine de Noiré and are used for various official functions at other times of the year. 

At the pier we made our way on to a local barge (une gabare) operated by the Vienne Loire Navigation Company, who in fact we have travelled with before, but that time in an open boat, whereas this time there was  a large open-sided cabin towards the back, which could be closed up if the weather was bad. 

La Forteresse - Chinon

Once everyone was on board, we set off for a river trip, which took us on a round-trip to experience both sides of the Vienne. From the river La Forteresse at Chinon looks particularly stunning - a real Lion in Winter moment. Terrific ride, incredibly comfortable and of course forewarned we were wearing the right gear, to counter the river breeze.

As we sailed gracefully along in what must have been near perfect conditions, we were treated to a gourmet picnic - wines from Domaine de Noiré (red and rosé) and mouthfuls of heaven prepared by the chef from Au Chapeau Rouge (Chinon) - Christophe Duguin, including terrine of foie gras, fish terrine with Touraine saffron, goat's cheese. We met him when we first arrived at Domaine de Noiré in the morning. 

Tino and Titeuf

We returned to the pier, climbed back on to the calèche, and made our way to Domaine de Noiré, where were given a tour of the cave, with Jean-Max providing the history and explanation. There was an extra wine tasting treat of the two white wines produced at the Domaine. "Amphora" which is produced in an Italian Amphora (a huge terracotta pot-container), which brings a whole new meaning to hand-crafted wine. Our tasting was silky, delicate and just lovely. The other "Noiré Blanc" was fabulous, complex and just delicious. Both will be ready in a few months.

Our now "end of morning" rounded off with more wine tasting, more delights from Christophe Duguin, particularly the Nougat de Tours, which has a sweet pastry base, with candied fruit, apricots, with almond macaroon or macaronade on top. There is a wide variety of recipes but Christophe Duguin as with everything else has made this one his own. The original recipe goes back to the Middle Ages - the time of Leonardo da Vinci and a Touraine (includes our region - Indre et Loire) speciality.

The whole event was superbly managed and beautifully presented. A truly fabulous time, which launched Domaine de Noiré's new initiative and the new season in real style.

Chapeau et merci à tous !! 

Lunch at the Boule de Fort

Bon Accord

Chinon is full of surprises. We've got to know the town steadily over a number of years and particularly since we moved here full-time in 2013. But there is always something new to be discovered. Which is what happened earlier this year and how we ended up cooking lunch for 45 people this week.

We've a lot of French friends who are always introducing us or involving us in hitherto unknown events and organisations. One of these is the Boule de Forte Club in Chinon - Cercle de Bon Accord, which our friends and long-time members Gilles et Marie-Lou invited us to visit for lunch, in November last year. The lunches take place once a month. Someone plans the menu - there's a rota, others look after the apéros, and there are plenty of hands to help serve the meal on the day. We've been to five lunches now, including our own this last week!

The Bon Accord is a great place, but well hidden. We've driven past it at least once a week probably, over the last seven years and not realised it was there. The building is set well back from the road and when the full-size wooden front gates are closed, it is invisible, even to someone walking by.  So the fact that the club was there at all was the first surprise.

Inside there's the main room with a bar at the end. Usually the tables are together in small groups, but for a lunch the space is re-organised. If there's around 25 people, the tables are laid out width ways on. For our lunch, they were set up length ways from the far end to just in front of the bar. It's a good space and very practical.

The welcome we got the first time we went was just lovely. The members are great and very friendly. That's how it's been ever since.  We took to it straight away and said we'd like to sign up. So from January this year we've been going once a month, for lunch with other members. We've have tried the game once and hopefully will be able to sort out a bit of tuition, so we understand the rules and technique a bit better. There are differences between boule and English bowls. It's difficult to see in the photo, but the rink is curved, which requires a different technique to play, more like placing the boule rather than launching it.

Ready to go

A couple of months ago at another lunch, Gilles suggested we organise an English lunch. Thinking that the usual number of members booking was manageable, we said yes.  Given the reputation English cooking has generally in France, I convinced myself that only about a dozen or so would sign up rather than the usual 25. So I sorted out a menu which was posted up a month in advance. 

What neither we or anyone else had remembered was that Easter was the weekend immediately before. Allowing for preparation time, meant that the shopping had to be done on the Saturday. 

Marie-Christine

Just before the Easter weekend we had a meeting at the club to run through everything with our helpers, which is when we discovered there were 45 coming, the largest number there'd ever been for lunch, some of whom were chefs. Mike was in origami-chef mode, so was making all the apéros. I had a shopping list sorted out, but now needed to adjust the quantities. We'd also been in touch with our regular music pals, so our two French friends Christine and Patrick were coming so we could sing together during the apéros. The songs were half and half in French and English and completely English.  We'd hoped they could both stay for lunch, but in the end Patrick had to get back to work.

Anyway come the day we got there for 10am and basically everything went like clockwork, except for the ovens, which cooked differently. Fortunately everything was fine. The singing went down well as did Mike's apéros. Everyone was very complimentary about the meal, which given all the clean plates was very satisfying. Huge relief truly. Most grateful to all our helpers at the club, particularly Marie-Christine, Janine, Gilles.

So we did ok - phew!!

All Quiet on the French Front . . .

Well not exactly, although it might seem like it, given that my last posting was back in February. In fact we've been flat out, working hard and having a great time. Started on the garden with the help of neighbours. It had got out of shape and there was some problematic planting. If we can keep going, just doing a bit at a time, we'll get it done. Going to be decorating shortly as well.

At the moment we're up to our necks with cooking. Doing a lunch tomorrow in Chinon. 
We joined a club back in January which has its own Boule de Fort court. Once a month they have a lunch which is organised on a rota basis, but basically there is a handful of people who do the cooking and others who help. Anyway the friend who got us involved suggested we did an English lunch in April, usually for around 25 people, but for some reason this time there are 45 coming. It's been an interesting exercise. We've never cooked lunch for that number before. It's always a traditional four course menu, including cheese, and there's all the apéro stuff as well. So a lot of work. Right now we're both feeling a bit knackered. Oh and they've also asked us to do some singing beforehand!

No one at the time had realised this lunch was straight after Easter. Here everything was closed except for Saturday morning, so we braved Leclerc to get all the shopping done. Went early so it wasn't too bad. Some friends from the club came as well to help. There's an account with Leclerc so we didn't have pay for anything as it all got charged back to the club.

Anyway keep everything crossed that it goes well.