I am back after a long while,other things got in the way!

Summer Journey

 

 

June , my birthday month seemed a good time to go and have a holiday in the beautiful South of France!

The harbour at Sanary sur Mer on our first evening.

 

We left Cornwall, I was armed with literary guides and  historical notes.Travelling by train to London  we stayed the night and then boarded the Eurostar at St.Pancras, changed at Gare de Nord  crossing Paris to The Gare de Lyon.  We took the TGV down to Marseilles. That evening we arrived at our destination the charming little port of Sanary sur Mer!

The TGV was great ,hurtling down through the French countryside in a double decker train was amazing and we were there so quickly.

 

Sanary proved to be the most delightful base for a holiday in this area and it had literary connections and that is always a treat for me.

Nothing quite prepares you for the light and colours of Provence!

The market in Toulon was wonderful,just about every nationality in the world seemed to be there with something amazing on offer. The sheep and goat heads at one butchers stall were a bit macabre and I did not photgraph them!

The fabric stalls were great and reasonably priced,I got some lovely sprigged lavender cotton and a small piece of Las Olivades cotton.

 This stall had the most luscious basil,huge leaves and the scent was beautiful

A closer look at the basil and the plant behind is very large pungeant Marrocan mint.

We had refreshing mint tea at a small cafe run by two affable Morrocan gentlemen who kissed my hand a lot!They said they came from Marrekesh and one of them had a brother in Peckam!

What a moustache,he is handsome!

At Hyeres we wandered the cobble streets and found a cafe for lunch.I thought of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson who had lived in Hyeres for a while and loved it.Katherine Mansfield,Edith Wharton and  others loved this place.Queen Victoria also had a passion for it and I am told she longed for the warmth of Hyeres on her death bed.

The backstreets are charming.

 The warmth and light makes mundane scenes look enchanting.

 

This trip was memorable too as we went to Aix and were able to visit Cezanne's atelier after a walk up along hill out of the town.The atelier was purpose built for Cezanne and is set in a green shady garden with gravel walkways .It is all very low key and the room where he painted has many of the artifacts from his still life paintings. His easel is there and even his old coat hangs evocatively on a hook on the wall. It is a small place with timed entry and has a reverential feeling . A homage to a great painter!

We walked  back into Aix to the Cours Mirabeau through the ancient streets and the flower market.Coffee at Les Deux Garcons but Picasso was not there or Hemmingway either! 

Every evening we took a stroll along the port of Sanary,had meal and wandered the old town. There are many more events that were amazing on this holiday,the Calanques and Cassis were Virgina Woolf complained that frogs kept her awake when she and Leonard were stayng there.I presume they were amphibious!!

I love the scent of the garrigue and the Maquis.What a lucky woman I am to be able to live some of my dreams.

What a birthday treat

Goodnight Sanary!

 



I have to have a rant!!!!

I do not want to be a misery but I feel at the moment that I am wandering in a hostile country!

 

The punitive way our government is treating the poor and the sick is a nightmare!

I was happy to be living in a country that was civilised enough to take care of its ill and disadvantaged but now I see greed,fear and ignorance being rewarded and kindness and compassion being swept away on a storm of vindictive destruction. Naive as I may seem I did believe we had some safeguards against this sort of destruction.

Libraries closed,people being bullied by private firms  and still the rich are getting richer. This is not the way to sort out a financial crisis but an excuse to line the pockets of the already well off.

I am now ashamed to be part of a country that behaves in this way.

People do not want to end up on the street but not everyone is born to go to Eton!

This is Britain today,scenes like this are becoming more common and will escalate as the new laws are brought into being.

I do not know exactly how to change this but I do know that there are people out there with some great ideas  that would help. We should fight for our public services ,I am deeply ashamed of the Con/Dems for their stance on the financial crisis and the way my fellow citizens are falling for the lies and half truths spread by our increasingly inflammatory popular press,BNP,UKIP etc.

Well there it is will this be the end of the all the work that was done in the past to make life bearable for the  disadvantaged and sick,I so hope not!Where are the decent ,caring people?

My Early Christmas present to myself!

I  enjoyed Beata Zatorska's first book the beautiful Rose petal Jam and have been waiting for the promised sequel Sugared Orange.

 

I was delighted to get my copy from Amazon a few days ago and have been savouring it every time I have a moment spare. Beata's first book was a memoir of her journey one summer to her homeland Poland. She now lives in Australia  working as a doctor and now she and her husband have made  another journey to Poland in the depths of winter.  Both books are full of recipes ,family photographs, poetry and the glorious scenery of her country.

She tells her family story with great love and nostalgia. The new book carries this story further into the cold Polish winter when icicles  hang and the woods are shrouded in snowflakes.

More stories of her beloved Granny, Mother, Aunts, her childhood and the food that marked all their lives.

Some of the images she uses are paintings by Olga Boznanska a polish painter of the 19th century .

Olga's self portrait.

Beata uses this delightful painting of a sleeping child by another Polish painter,

He was also a writer and designer and spent some time in the company of Gauguin.His work reminds me a little of some of Carl Larsson's work.

 Another gentle study by Olga

This unusual  pose is by  Stanislaw.

I love this one.

So you see my self indulgence has brought me to some delightful paintings and a journey in winter to a romantic land of old  lamplit cobbled streets,cafe society and snowy landscapes not to mention the scrumpious recipes and beautiful poetry that leap from the pages of this truly exquisite book.  I can almost hear sound of a plaintive gypsy violin escaping into the frosty air and rising into a black starry night.

I can only hope Beata will visit her homeland again in the spring and autumn!

 



Pre -Raphaelites agogo!

I have been getting together an event for the library,really exciting subject too.
A wonderful lady called Kit Williams got chatting to me in the library several months ago. She asked me to help her find some info on Frida Kahlo and I was able to help her.
I asked her if she ever gave lectures and she said yes she relished giving them so we have had a very well attended Frida Kahlo Event and now we are are about to do the Pre-RaphaeliteBrotherhood.

I have always loved their art and enjoyed reading around their circles. They were a really radical group  and changed art for ever with there subject  matter and luminous colours. Revolutionary in their day to some they now seem a bit old hat but I will always love them.

I was lucky enough to see this painting by Holman Hunt  in London and the colors and movement really blew me away!

At the library we are going to have our own "Stunner" reading from Tennyson,Rossetti and Keats.

Anyone around Truro interested in coming on the 7th of November?

No more time to muse today!