Battle of the Gods

We witnessed a colossal battle in the heavens last night.

First Zeus threw down his lightning across the Mediterranean Sea, vaunting his supremacy over sky, sea and earth. Time and again the blinding streaks crackled across the sky, seeming to fracture the invisible ropes which hold our universe together.

 

Then, long minutes later, there came an answering rumble from the north. Thor the Thunder God had been awoken from his slumber and grumbling angrily took up his hammer, Mjölnir, and strode south to meet the challenge.

It was an epic confrontation. Zeus would leap out from his
hiding place beyond the clouds, searing the sky and eye with his jagged armaments. Then Thor would respond, the rolling beating of his thunder sounding like fifty thousand horses galloping across the sky. More lightning, more thunder claps, the air scintillating with power and fury.

Zeus seemed to be almost playing with his opponent, darting across the heavens, hurling his weapons and slipping away. Thor was indignant and bellicose, bragging of his potency yet wrong-footed by his more nimble opponent.

But still the battle went on, both deities refusing to cede mastery to the other. Both were intent on slogging it out for the edification of the mortals watching below; mouths agape and in awe.

It seemed to be like some commentary on my recent experience. My wife and I had spent a long weekend back in England, visiting relatives.

England felt as bitter cold as the Scandinavia of Thor. The winds blew into the bone,
the cold was so intense it seemed to clutch at our blood. Even when the sky was
blue there felt the promise of dismal weather.

A good half of the English people who served us in shops and cafes were either distant or disengaged. A few were friendly, a few happy and helpful, but most seemed taciturn and dour, as if their minds and hearts were elsewhere. They seemed to be looking at me from beyond a barricade. The shop workers from Eastern Europe were different, good-natured and willing to engage and joke, happy to show something of the life behind the shield.

Back in France, the air was warm and gentle, the light brighter and more revealing. The bus driver was friendly. We bought some food to take away from a young woman working in the café next door who suggested we take our bags up to our apartment while she got our meals ready for us. When I returned a few minutes later we talked about learning different languages while she wrapped up the food. As I went into our apartment block a neighbour stopped me and asked me to tell my wife that she would be returning to a club they both go to next year, or maybe next week. I still need to improve my French.

So the battle in the skies last night mirrors the battle within me.

I was born and brought up in England and much of my thought and mind was shaped by it. But I no longer feel at home with its grey clouds and the dark sardonic nature of its people. I love the light and vivacity of the south, the outdoor living, the readiness to engage and smile.

Thor or Zeus? Heimdall or Hermes?

A little of both north and south, a little of neither. A man of the twentieth century, living in the twenty first and writing about ancient times.

Aren’t I the luck one?

The Heart of the Norman and Angevin Realms

When I was young I idolised King Richard I of England, the Lion Heart.  I loved the television series starring Dermot Walsh and was enthralled as my father carefully put together an Airfix model of my hero.

Later, when I found out that Richard spent only six months of his ten year reign in England I felt disappointed.  Later still, when I found out how he had used the kingdom and people as a vast treasury to fund his dynastic wars and crusade I felt almost a sense of betrayal.

Yet now in that I am writing the third book in my The Lost King I begin to understand things a little better.

During the course of the third book Edgar has been forced to leave his sanctuary in Scotland.  He spends several years in northern France, taking his war into William the Conqueror’s Dukedom of Normandy.

As I have researched it I began to see why William, like the later Richard, spent so little time in the kingdom he had so recently conquered.

It was because for both men the centre of their power and certainly the focus of their concerns lay not in England but in France.  Normandy was only one of a number of powerful territories all owing suzerainty to France.  There was constant warfare and conflict between the lords of these lands and with the king himself. 

The conquest of England gave William the right to call himself King and therefore, believe he was in some sense the equal of Philip I of France.  Yet the heart of his rule was and remained Normandy.  Once he had quashed the resistance to his rule in his new kingdom he turned his attention to Europe once again and only returned to England for short and infrequent visits.

I realise now that Edgar can and will operate on a far grander canvas than hitherto.

 

 

 

 

Friends

Our very good friends Chris and Gina have arrived here for a week’s visit.

The last time we saw them was on the day we left England.  They came round to take us to the airport hotel and found us floundering and panic-stricken in the middle of an impossible number of jobs which seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

‘Don’t worry,’ they said. ‘We’ll take whatever you can’t pack to the charity shop or the dump.’

They disappeared while we drew breath and managed to get the last of our life in something nearly resembling order.  They returned an hour later, took us to the hotel, had a drink with us and left as quietly and as encouragingly as they had appeared a few hours earlier.

And now, after almost a year, we are back together again.  It’s lovely.

I am reminded, not that I needed to be, of the value and joy of true friendship.  It’s like a literature of life.

I DREAM IN FRENCH

Today I woke up and realised that I had been dreaming in French.  To be exact I was dreaming in my Pidgin Franglais but it was progress of a sort.

The strange thing was that although the dream was set in France I the place I lived in and it’s surrounding were like those I lived in Taunton, in England.

In the dream I went to a Boulangerie and refused to pay for a baguette because it was too expensive.  ‘One Euro Thirty Fiveiesme!’ I cried.  ‘Vous kidding moi.’  I flounced out of the shop and back to my old home down the hill.

When I recounted the dream to my wife she pointed out that the Boulangerie I had visited, although undeniably French was in the exact same location as that of Barry the Baker, the baker that I used to go to in Taunton.

‘Sacre blue, mon old mate.  Je suis dreaming in Pidgin Franglais about Pidgin Somerset sur La Mer.

Where I Write Now

I have now moved to the Cote d’Azur and my space has changed fundamentally.  My wife and I are renting a small apartment on the seventh floor of a block which overlooks the roofs of the town across to the Mediterranean Sea.  The light is wonderful and I can well understand why so many artists were drawn to live and work in this area.

Our apartment is very small, only 30 metres square.  The living room has a kitchen area to one side, a small sofa and two comfortable arm-chairs.  Close to the kitchen is a large table at which I work.  In front is a wall of glass, the French windows which lead out to a terrace almost as big as the living room.  A large wooden table and chairs sits on one side, green plastic ones to the other.  Empty flower-pots hang upon the rail, awaiting the plants we will shortly buy.  Despite moving here on the 1 December I have spent some time on the terrace on most days.

In front of the apartment is the railway with trains streaming between France and Italy.  Occasionally a TGV sweeps through with a majestic disdain.  I can see over the railway to a road which will soon be filled with sculptures made up of Lemons and Oranges, the high point of the Festival du Citron.  Beyond that is a large crane, which reminds me of my childhood in London.  Beyond this is the Mediterranean Sea, the very same on which I sat and dreamed of ancient Greek triremes sailing westward in search of trade or land.

On Sunday I sat on the terrace and read a short biography of George Simenon, French English Dictionary in hand.  My school-boy French is better at reading than speaking so I managed to understand more of the book than the conversation I have to undertake in the shops.

Unfortunately, the terrace is too bright for a laptop but I am able to think about my work, to plan and plot it and to revise.  For writing I come back inside the apartment.  The light washes over me like a stream.  It is what I craved so much in my old room back in England.

The one thing I miss here is access to the internet which we can’t get in our flat as yet.  It means that research is almost impossible, testament, I suppose, to how the web has changed our lives.  However, the good thing about this is that I have more time to write.  Except that the weather is so lovely, the town is so ripe for exploration and I am enjoying myself so much that I don’t write as much as I plan.  Never mind, my latest book ‘Artful’ is in the process of its third revision and I hope to publish it soon.

In fact, I’m going to get back to work shortly.

On our way to the Cote d’ Azur

Nine or ten years ago I decided to take a week’s holiday in Liguria, Northern Italy.  I flew from Bristol airport to Nice arriving late in the evening.  Because of the late hour of my arrival I had already booked a hotel from England.  When I told the bus driver where I wanted to get off he gave a shrug which I could not fathom.

When I got off I began to understand.  The district I had arrived at was something like the Vienna of Carol Reed‘s film, ‘The Third Man.’

The streets were dark and had an atmosphere of mystery and threat.  People hurried past in buttoned up clothes, avoiding the gaze of others.  Any moment I expected to hear the sound of a zither and Orsen Welles lurking in an alley.  I hurried on myself, keen to find my hotel.

In fact it seemed less of a hotel and more a venue for petty criminals and ladies of the night.  I felt distinctly uncomfortable, reminded of my stay in the less salubrious quarters ofNaples.

Still, I had only booked for one night.

My plan was to head across the border to San Remo so the following day I caught a train from the central station in Nice.  A lovely older lady, as fragile as a china doll, apologised for the state of the train.  ‘It is not a good advert for the Cote d’Azur,’ she explained.  It may not have been, but the journey certainly was.  I split my time between talking with her and gazing out at the scenery with excitement.  There was something truly fascinating and beguiling about the coast.

The lady left the train at Monaco and I travelled on.  By the time I had reached the last town on the French border, I had made up my mind.  I would postpone my journey to Italy by a day and see what the French Riviera and this border town had to offer.  I hopped off the train.

I did not know it but I had arrived at the town of Menton.

I walked down from the station, loving the warmth of the air and the calm and attractive buildings.  I went into the first hotel I saw, the Hotel Moderne, and was surprised to see a virtual double of a friend on the Reception desk.  ‘We have a room with a balcony but for one night only,’ the Receptionist said. ‘It overlooks the church so you’ll hear the bells.’

I snapped up the room there and then, threw my bag on the bed, and went off to explore the town.

I was entranced by everything I saw.  I eventually ended up in an old square with a strange statue staring down upon me and ate at one of the lively restaurants which crammed around it.  As I sat there, I felt a warm sense of peace inveigle itself into me.

Then I strolled back along the Promenade to my hotel.

It was as I walked along that the magic happened.

Four beautiful young black women strode out into the busy road and halted the traffic.  They then began a lively and good-humoured dance.  They were replaced immediately by two young men who made the road an arena for their athletic and daring display.  Any town that allows this to happen must be something special, I thought.  Talk about life-enhancing.

I had fallen in love with Menton.

Now, after many years of visiting the town with my wife Janine, we are on the count-down to moving there.  Only five weeks to go.

What’s happening to the weather?

I hate the British weather.  The skies are more often grey than blue, the sun lacks warmth and charity and the wind is searching and bitter.

I often used to reflect upon the fact that the first day of summer was said to be 21 June and Midsummer’s Day 23 June.  This 6 day summer seemed often be a rather realistic portrayal of our most longed for and most disappointing season.

Now, however, the seasons are mad.  We were in the South of France in late September, basking in lovely weather which was, astonishingly, cooler than back home in England. Now I have just been sitting sitting a cup of hot chocolate in a cafe by the river with the sun bathing me in real heat.  I was also sitting at a table outside, something which is a comparatively recent innovation in these isles and which, in itself, says something about the change in weather, either really or at least in the mind of the consumer.

I’m not complaining, however.  Nor am I going to let this deflect me one jot from our plan to move to the South of France, the Riviera, the land of sun, painters and authors.

More of this in later posts.

September – a good time to holiday

Image via Wikipedia

Those people who don’t like the crowds, or the heat or don’t have children often choose to holiday in September.  Everything gets a little bit cheaper and the holiday destinations less frenetic.  I heartily recommend it.

Charles Dickens was an early proponent of the September holiday. As early as 1837 he spent September in Broadstairs which he returned to time and time again.

He leaves an interesting account of the young visitors to the resort.

So many children are brought down to our watering-place that, when they are not out of doors, as they usually are in fine weather, it is wonderful where they are put: the whole village seeming much too small to hold them under cover.  In the afternoons, you see no end of salt and sandy little boots drying on upper window-sills.  At bathing-time in the morning, the little bay re-echoes with every shrill variety of shriek and splash — after which, if the weather be at all fresh, the sands teem with small blue mottled legs. The sands are the children’s great resort. They cluster there, like ants: so busy burying their particular friends, and making castles with infinite labour which the next tide overthrows, that it is curious to consider how their play, to the music of the sea, foreshadows the realities of their after lives.

Broadstairs remained one of Dickens’ favourite holiday places but he also travelled further afield.  In 1844 he took his whole family in what must have resembled a caravan around France and Italy.  He stayed at two villas for the last six months of the year.

Even then, it was wonderful to be a writer.