On the Road Again

Since the beginning of July I've been working hard, travelling and preparing for my daughter's August wedding.
On our travels in Britain Mr Price and I stopped for an hour in Chepstow, promising ourselves a bit of sight-seeing and ice-creams before crossing the Bristol channel by the Severn Bridge.
Chepstow's a pretty Welsh town with, disappointingly, no home-made ice-cream shops along its cobbled streets... frustrated, we opted instead to sit on the sunlit castle lawns to sulk and to sketch.
It's a beautiful ruined Norman castle, perched on a limestone cliff above the river Wye. Building started in 1067 and it's the oldest surviving stone castle in Britain.
In the second Civil War, the parliamentarians, led by Colonel Ewer, took the castle by storm and breached the walls with their cannon.
This was in a fit of pique after they discovered there were no ice creams to be had in town.....

Working On The Railway

Merdrignac is a pretty town on the inland road heading towards western Brittany. The highway runs by Loudeac, Rostrenen, the Daoulas Gorges and the Black Mountains- which aren't exactly vertiginous, but more like high moorland.
After a drive of two or three hours from here, you would reach Finistere of the shipping forecasts and the grimly beautiful Crozon Peninsula with its giddying cliffs and the furious sea thrashing on the reefs.
However, despite its charms, Merdrignac has nothing so spectacular to recommend it to the guide books. Even the trains have gone, but where the railway ran has been made into part of a 'voie verte'- an 18km hiking/cycle track .
Along the way, several old railway passenger shelters are being renovated, and we were asked to paint some reminders of the past inside the one at Merdrignac.
This is what Mr. Price has been doing for
the last week or so and on a searingly hot day I go along to have a look at his work.
He's painted a fifties-style stationmaster and he's added some clutter- a box of lettuces, a shopping bag, an umbrella, torn cinema posters of the era. There's a newspaper on the bench, too, and I see he's shown the article where some poor unfortunate was guillotined the previous morning.. featured later in 'Qui Detective No 552'!
While the artist applies some anti-graffiti varnish I go for a wander. The old station building's used as a council depot now and the yard's full of signs, compressors and other machines- a world that, thankfully, I know little about.
I'm somehow excited when I find a bit of the old railway track glinting through the surface of the 'voie verte', a souvenir of a gentler time when a journey was ruled by a train timetable.
There's a convenient bench further on where I sit and draw what must have been a railway workers' house.
Nearby is the town's swimming pool and, as I work, this provides a backdrop of childrens' cries- "Elise, Elise!!" " Venez les filles!!". It's a class of schoolchildren and the shouting stops only when someone misbehaves, the teacher blows his whistle and tells them off. There's a deathly silence, and even I feel guilty!
Back at the abris voyageur the varnishing's finished- how smelly it is, like nail varnish remover! "Amyl acetate", my Dad once told me, in the days when we could talk, when he wasn't so deaf.
Let's hope the naughty teenagers who hang out in this shelter, drinking beer, kicking the walls and spraying their tags will leave off out of respect for the artist's handiwork!

Armchair Football

Now, I'm not all that keen on football but I once saw an excellent World Cup Final on a TV in a bar in Chamonix in the French Alps. That was in 1966....back....back in time....... on one side of a long table were the English supporters, and opposite us were the... well you get the picture and I'm not one to gloat. Not here anyway.
It's England versus USA tonight, so to turn our evening into a more positive experience for several people at once I suggest to Mr. Price that we take beer round to an English neighbour, (a keen lady football fan, I assure you!) and watch the game there... thinking I can draw the two of them as they followed the match.
There's just one' jumping-up-and-down -and -shouting- YES!' incident from the pair when England score their only goal, so I can work quite solidly as they sit slumped in their armchairs.
And a convenient space on my picture means I can write down bits of commentary from the TV and from my companions.
Someone's got his jumper on his lap while I'm drawing him and complains bitterly that I've made him look like he has "a massive prolapse or something" so I slap on some white gouache to remedy the offending lump and go over that bit again.
Still not quite right, but it'll do and the match is over and we're off and away home with no other cars to be seen, only the flash of moths and a scurry of rabbits in the limbo of the twilight country lanes.

Dinard, Hitchcock and The Birds

Dinard's such a lively and pretty place! It's an old-fashioned Breton seaside town, nestling around white sea-strands and an emerald sea.
In the late 19th century American and British aristocrats popularised Dinard as a fashionable summer resort, and they built stunning villas on the cliff tops and exclusive hotels such as the 'Le Grand Hotel' on the seafront during the French "Belle Epoque".
It's rumoured that Alfred Hitchcock (who spent time here) based the house in 'Psycho' on one of these villas.
Dinard has a British Film Festival each October, and to acknowledge this, a statue of the film director- complete with birds- stands on the promenade by the Plage de l'Ecluse.
A well-placed bench overlooks this and, as I sit and draw, a flock of marauding seagulls sweep down to the beach and attack the belongings trustingly left on the beach by some unwary bather.
In a callous and uncaring way I'm secretly delighted as a plastic bag of, I presume, culinary delights for the returning swimmer, is mercilessly torn to shreds before a sunbathing 'neighbour' stops the destruction by shouting and flapping his arms.
As I continue with my sketch I wonder if Hitchcock ever witnessed something similar? Before me, his bronze statue looks out over the scene and his dead eyes glint in the hot sun, but he remains understandably impassive....

Sunday Fun!

It's a long holiday weekend in Brittany, for a religious feast-called 'Consumption', 'Reprobation' or somesuch.
We're invited for lunch on the Sunday chez some English friends and the twenty-minute journey to Evran takes us through several villages.
Usually, all to be seen on the way (if you're lucky!) is perhaps an old woman bent double, painfully making her way down the road with a bucket. "Why?" is Mr. Price's usual comment.
Today's different, it's hot and sunny, there's a car-boot sale in one village and a cycle race in another; the village cafes have put out bright umbrellas and tables and people are sitting at them!
Folk are out for a stroll, or gardening and there's an elderly man in a vest sweeping the path by his garden wall, watched by his wife.
"Why?!" says Mr. Price, predictably, "Why go outside on the hottest day since records began- probably- and, in this searing heat, sweep up clouds of dust into your face?!!"
We eat lunch outside, in the shade, with views across the fields to farms and barns.


In our own village, too, when we get back, there's a bit of activity. There was a wedding here yesterday, and, as is traditional, some of the guests have got together for a midday meal the next day.
Plus there's a delight of delights for the artist starved of new and refreshing subject matter on her doorstep! A breakaway faction of Bretons has set up a game of 'palets' just across the road
and in full view of the upstairs studio window!
Flowering hawthorn trees makes a beautiful backdrop to this charming evening pageant, played out on the lawn by the church. I find a page in my sketchbook that I've already prepared with a green wash and I work on top of this with a conté pencil, watercolour and gouache.
While the men get on with their game the women sit and talk and small children play.
By the time I'm finished, the palet players are leaving, taking with them their wooden boards and their metal discs.
Soon, I think, the hedgehog who likes to snuffle about on this quiet patch will come out to look for worms and insects and will discover his daisied lawn trampled underfoot. He will notice the traces of man: here a sweet-wrapper, there a discarded cigarette butt, and, I fear, the taint of pipi by the hedge.

Images: Caroline Johnson 'Palet Players Under Flowering Hawthorns, Brittany' and ' Across the field, Evran'. The 16th Century version of palets.

Out on the Town

At about eight pm on a Saturday, our friend from up the hill, The Only Intellectual in the Village calls round. Do we want to go to the theatre? Tonight? At ten-thirty? Well, no, not really, kind thought though it is, I'd already planned an evening full of activities: a bit of telly, glass of wine or two, chocolate. It might even involve a pair of pyjamas if I can find the energy to trail upstairs to put them on.
"But yes! How nice! That would make a lovely change, wouldn't it?" I force a smile towards Mr. Price.
The big road to Dinan's blocked, says our friend later, and he takes a detour through a hundred villages, driving furiously with a remix of Noir Desir blasting out from the speakers next to me in the back.
I'm convinced I'm going to die- but I don't, and I survive to see the 13th Century Theatre des Jacobins in all its beauty. We aren't in the main theatre but in a less formal, relaxed venue with chairs and tables set before a small stage.
I've brought my sketchbook , in case of boredom, and I do a quick study of the audience before the act comes on and the lights go off. They're called Lui et Moi (Him and Me), a comedic musical duo who are (my translation):




"at the crossroads 0f reality and wonderland, between poetry and madness... first and foremost they are Two Fools, who, between songs, are mainly silent, interacting with glances and few words. Between black humour and flights into popular and romantic music, these clown-poet-singers question our society, our bad habits and give us hope and joy, in all humility"

They're really rather good, and I'd enjoy it even more if I understood more than a fifth of the cultural references and the plays on language.
I can remember feeling lost and stupid like this when listening to Georges Brassens in the Sixties. The audience bursts into laughter and I think 'Eh?" and by the time I've vaguely worked something out it's no longer amusing and I've missed half the next verse. Now and again, though, I do catch something and that makes it worthwhile.

Wow! Seven years studying the language at school to A-Level standard; two summers spent wasting around with French friends; seventeen years over here speaking fluently, but I go to see something like this and I'm floundering!
I'm in the dark with my drawing, too, but scribble on and I'm quite pleased with the funny results: detached heads, weird guitars and stripy socks, there's somehow a visual Essence of Performance which nicely matches my distorted, reduced-down understanding of the whole event.
The two make a pleasant whole and I don't really regret the pyjamas!

A La Recherche Du Thumb Perdu...

Mid-week last week and we go back to the Polyclinique 'with' Mr Price's injured thumb. "The twentieth was yesterday, monsieur" the receptionist informs him, but kindly arranges for the specialist to have a look at him.
We have a long wait in a small room, and- wouldn't you know it! the doctor comes in when I'm halfway through sketching a counterful of grim iodine bottles, lint and bandage boxes.
In town later we meet up with our nice neighbour who lives up the hill from us: he's The Only Intellectual in the Village and one of those foppish, rakish bachelors who seem to typify the French male to the British. Thankfully, today he isn't wearing his ridiculous shoes with the elongated and upturned chisel-toes.... I'd have pretended I hadn't noticed him!
He's whiling away the time until the film starts at the cinema opposite.

It's a lovely sunny day as we sit outside Le Café Noir. I draw while the other two talk or discutent, I'm unable to do both as they're different sides of the brain- well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. They discuss world wars, books, music, art and film... and how that man who went by was staring so intently at that lady's bottom.
I'm sketching the bloke at the table just along from me who looks like he based himself on the Gallagher brothers- combat jacket, unshaved, a bit rough. He's sullen and silent and it's only when he gets up and mumbles that he's going to faire pipi that I realise he's with the young woman drinking Coca-Cola opposite .
As we leave we notice a customer with his arm in a sling and yet another in a wheelchair. Indicating his own poor bandaged hand, Mr Price quips "Café des Invalides!" .