Shakespeare and Co

We went to the English bookshop, Shakespeare and Co in Rue du Boucherie.  This was started by an American, Sylvia Beach, in the 1920s and attracted writers such as Hemingway, Becket,  Anais Nin, Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce.  Beach was the first publisher of Joyce’s Ulysses.   

Another American, George Whitman, started a bookshop named The Mistral in 1951 and renamed it Shakespeare and Co in the 1960s after Sylvia Beach died.  Whitman died two years ago, after spending over half a century offering hospitality to poets, writers, vagabonds and wanderers.   Many of the beat poets such as Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti came visiting and gave readings and Gregory Corso was banned. There are thirteen rooms above the shop and Whitman was generous with them.  A pictured quote said something like “Be hospitable to strangers as they may be angels in disguise”.   

 I know all this because we were both so taken by the shop and its beautiful book crammed walls that Mike bought a book giving its history and read it back at the hotel and kept reading bits out to me.   Whitman’s daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman, is now in charge.  I bought a copy of Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, satisfyingly stamped with the Shakespeare and Co logo.  Whitman’s daughter is continuing his traditions - in a recent television programme, Jeannette Winterson told of the sanctuary she had received there at a bad time in her life. 

 

After Shakespeare and Co we had the misguided idea of buying tickets for the hop on, hop off tourist buses.   We thought we could travel round Paris all afternoon being taken to different places and be sure of getting back to the hotel when we felt like it.   The first reason this didn’t work was that there was no printed plan of where we were going and the very irritating English commentary was constantly running behind where we actually were.   The commentary wasn’t even straight narrative but a story about a young woman named Adele who appeared to be travelling Paris looking for a painter who had a name something like Chagall but not quite.  The commentator had a plummy excitable voice, like an early Listen With Mother presenter.  

The other reason the bus didn’t work was that it was very cold.  We tried sitting on the open topped upper deck but went downstairs after a while, shivering.  This was after Mike had a weird wardrobe malfunction involving the zip on his jacket somehow bursting open everywhere except in the middle and both of us trying to fix it on the top of the swaying bus whilst he stood and clung onto a seat back and I worried that he might fall backwards down the abyss of the stairwell .  When we had fixed his coat and gone downstairs we found the lower deck was not a lot warmer.  After a while I said, “I’m sorry about this, but I don’t think I can bear to do this all afternoon” and found that Mike couldn’t bear it either and we realised we'd wasted a great deal of money but said we'd put it down to experience.     

We thought we’d cheer ourselves up with lunch. We were looking for somewhere warm and nurturing and found Le Navigator in Rue Garlande.   The outside looked like old Parisian and the daily specials board looked good with lots of choices.  When we got inside we could see that it was filled with elderly respectable Parisians slowly eating their lunches at small tables with clean white cloths. There were middle aged waitresses wearing neat skirts that just brushed their knees.   There was also a very large dog who appeared to be a resident.   The fact that we didn’t get there till half past one was probably the only reason we got a table without booking.

The food was actually sublime.  I took chunks of bread and chased round my plate every scrap of the light green oil dressing that came with my tuna starter.  For main course were lean and perfectly cooked little lamb steaks in a dark red fruity sauce with a plateful of thin golden chips.  There was a chocolate mousse to finish. It was bliss. 

We spent our last night in Paris lazing in our hotel room.  Our lunch was so good that we didn’t want or need any dinner and we read and lounged and drank a little wine in warmth and comfort. 

And today we’re going home.

Visiting the Louvre

The Louvre in Paris is housed in an ancient palace.  It is very imposing with extensive walls and buildings and arches and corners.  And the entrance to the Louvre in Paris is situated in a modern glass pyramid which is impressive in its own way but looks nothing like the rest of the Louvre.   It’s not obviously the entrance.  Which is why it was possible for two people, one of whom had never been to the Louvre and the other who had been years ago before the pyramid was built, to spend a long time wandering through arches and round corners and up and down the side of walls just looking for the way in.  It wasn’t signposted.  Perhaps they think it’s louche to make it too obvious. We eventually asked a security guard.      

Once inside it’s like Casey’s Court, as my mother would have said – people everywhere.  We got a map and tried to go upstairs to sit in the café to decide what we were doing but Mike was stopped from going upstairs or rather, Mike’s umbrella was stopped from going upstairs.  So we went to check the umbrella into the cloakroom and were told that we couldn’t check the umbrella until we’d bought a ticket.   So we went to buy a ticket but found that because Mike is registered as disabled with his lousy breathing problems we could both go in for free – him as a man with a disability and me as a person accompanying him.  But because we were allowed in free they wouldn’t give us a ticket, not even a ticket acknowledging that they’d let us in freely. However, when we went back to check the umbrella in the other girl in the cloakroom wasn’t so rigorous and accepted it ticketless.

It’s very kind of the Louvre to let people with disabilities in free of charge but it would be helpful if they would acknowledge this on paper.  Because we did keep getting stopped and asked for our tickets and had to keep reiterating that one of us was disabled and the other of us was there to pick him up in case he fell over.

 

We went to look at Decorative Objects.  We would have liked to see some of the paintings but didn’t think we could cope with the crowds.  And I never knew that before they started making porcelain in Limoges, they made wonderful enamel works – very turquoise and green and blue.  I was even pointing them out from a distance before we’d finished.  “Look,” I’d say authoritatively, “I bet that’s Limoges”.  And it was. 

There were lots of intricate ancient pieces but very heavily Christian - lots and lots of crucifixions.   Wouldn’t it be nice if the symbol for Christianity was Christ being taken up into heaven on a cloud – flying rather than nailed down?  Or, if that would be difficult for people to wear round their necks,  how about the fish?    I have a Jewish friend who says she can't understand a religion that takes for it's symbol an ancient instrument of death by torture.  And I must say I agree with her.  

There were also amazing Flanders tapestries – and I started picking them out too.  They used a particular shade of red – especially on ones involving really cheerful looking bears.  And there were Venetian painted glasses and Spanish pottery painted with Moorish twirls and little brown and blue dots and circles. 

So we must have spent two or three hours looking at all that and didn’t get to any of the other sections.  Though we saw some of the French pseudo classical sculptures, most of which appeared to have been done after the Revolution.  I’m not overly keen on classical themes and find some of them particularly silly, even when they’ve been wonderfully executed.  Consider the idea of a naked man with a shawl over his arm and his dog beside him killing a stag.    It’s such a shame, as the sculptor goes to all that bother to make it look like a real man and a real dog and a real stag and then it falls down on detail.  Who goes stag hunting wearing nothing but a pashmina?  The Sunday shooting crowd in the Dordogne would laugh in your face – or shoot you.

We really weren’t up to anything further after the Decorative Objects and the few sculptures.  So we sat in the Richelieu café and had two very expensive pots of tea and a very expensive piece of cheesecake but, as we hadn’t paid to get in, that was alright. 

Just before we left the Louvre we were elevated to the glass pyramid entrance on a sort of rising platform, especially for the disabled, even if they were thinking of the disabled in wheelchairs.    It was wonderful, just like Jesus on a cloud.   

 

Coming to Paris

I cut my finger on a Zebra.  I carried him across towns and countries and continents as a present for Mike.   I never know what to buy for my husband as a holiday present and I thought the Z would like to stand on Mike’s desk.  He is beautiful and made of twisted wire but, as I was trying to unpack my case, he bit me and now I’ve dripped blood all over my pyjama trousers and other garments.

We’re in Paris.   I left Dubai yesterday in the sunshine and it’s snowing here.  Early yesterday morning Sue and I were swimming in the pool.  This is literally five steps from her back door so she takes a mug of tea out there before work.  You leave the tea on the side by the shallow end, swim a length or two and then stop for a refreshing gulp - very practical and a good lark.  But this all happened at 7.00 am and Dubai is 3 hours in front of France, so it was 4.00 am French time.

Peter was immensely kind and drove me to the airport.   I had thought I would be going by taxi which was worrying as taxis can’t always find where Sue and Peter live and, even if they can, don’t necessarily come on time.     But, glory be, everything went okay.  A short changeover in Doha, where I had already determined on catching my booked flight to Paris, with or without my luggage.    I spent time mentally rehearsing resistance in case of trouble.   And none of it was necessary.  Not only did Qatar get everything on time, but I was given one of those great seats at the front of the row with tons and tons of legroom. 

The flight was on time, Mike met me and now we’re in a hotel in the 5^th arrondissement three floors up where they bring you breakfast in your room.  I feel like Mr Salteena, the chap in Daisy Ashford's Young Visiters, who goes visiting and can't get over the fact that he is served tea in bed.  "Tea in bed," he shouts to his friend, Ethel Montagu, "I have had some tea in bed".  We've had breakfast on our room and it was lovely.   We’re staying here till Wednesday then coming back to Cherveix.  

 The whole trip has been grand.  I’ve met with nothing but kindness the whole time I’ve been away.  I'm glad to be back. But I think I've become addicted to blogging and won't stop now.

Friday

Prayers start at the local mosque somewhere between 5 and 6 in the morning and are repeated at intervals throughout the day.  I said to Sue that it was a good thing that the man leading the prayers had a strong tuneful voice and was very disillusioned to be told that it’s probably a recording. 

Yesterday morning I turned my back on soukhs and heritage sites and beaches and went to Marks and Spencers.   I was longing for new Marks’ underwear, unobtainable in the Dordogne.  I shopped joyfully and nearly made an awful mistake.  I was just about to take my basket to the “Pay Here” counter, when I realised that it was a “Pay Here” for men and there was another checkout (for ladies) at the other side of the shop.  There are a lot of expats in Dubai but I’m sure it can’t be acceptable to scatter your undies across the men’s section.    

Sue took me to downtown Dubai in the afternoon and we rode an abas (a little wooden boat) across the creek and then took another one back again - probably one of the best bargains in Dubai at just under 20p each way.  

Later I walked to the Dubai Museum through one of the older soukhs, selling mainly pashminas, cushions and hangings.   

The Museum was fun with lots of life size tableaux picturing old Arab life emphasising the idea that modern Dubai life has arrived very suddenly.   There was also rather a dangerous looking door.

Door with sharp metal edges

After the Museum I got caught up in one of the sillier aspects of modern Dubai life.  I wanted to go back by metro and,  walking  from the Museum to the stop I needed, I found myself in a street full of hasslers.  “Madam, madam, what you want – I got copy watch, copy bag, copy perfume.” This was repeated continually along the street. I just wanted to get to the metro station and tried, “No, no thank you,” a few times but ended up just ignoring them.  They were fairly overwhelming.        

Last night was a party – Ursula and Sally, two of Peter’s work colleagues, had very close birthdays.  Ursula’s flat was beautiful and the mainly university crowd were a very nice bunch.  And there was alcohol.  

With Ursula