We shall await your immediate response

Amongst all of the emails about the enormous amounts of money I’ve inherited and won (my sex life seems to have been put on hold by the spammers for the moment). This one caught my eye. How long do you wait for an immediate response?

Why did I dream about that?

I was running down a corridor with someone, Dom or my little sister, I’m not sure. We were being chased by someone I knew would kill us when he caught us. As he was going along he was hitting everyone who came in his path over the head with some sort of heavy bar; pieces of skull were falling to the ground. When he caught up with us I just hoped that I would be killed straight off, but that was unlikely. The first blow I didn’t feel at all - then the alarm woke me up. I was quite upset by the dream at first until I began to piece together where it came from:

Yesterday evening I watched The Da Vinci Code, that explains some of the violence. I was disappointed with the film, good job Tom Hanks was in it. I also had two accidents (One and two) on my mind. Where did the pieces of skull come from?

When we first came to France I was given a book of short stories to read by one of Rob’s pupils; Letters From My Windmill by Alphonse Daudet. My French wasn’t good enough to read it back then. Dom bought a copy of the same book this summer so I decided it was time to read mine. It is a delightful collection of stories about the south of France. I recommend it. One of the stories starts off with the author having received a letter from one of his readers asking for a cheerful story for a change. Instead he tells the story of the man with the golden brain who eventually falls in love with a woman and removes all of the gold in pieces to buy her everything that she wants. A sad and strange story indeed… So that’s where the pieces of skull came from.

If you want to know why the good people of Avignon dance on the bridge and not in the streets read this book.

Sarah Bernhardt hops by again

See here

We recently acquired some new vintage postcards from an auction. One of the albums came from a chateau. In fact there were two chateaux, the parents chateau and the chateau of the grandparents. There was a Granny so we must assume she was an English Lady.

Ninette wrote to her uncle that she had two letters in her possession from Sarah Barnhardt. Unfortunately the letters had been written to the Comtesse de Najac who was a close friend of Sarah Bernhardt. As Ninette was staying with friends who knew the Comtesse they were going to take her to see her, so she would be asking for a signed photograph of Sarah.

I’ve also fallen in love with an Elephant…

In search of Raymond Bergevin

Raymond Bergevin was the man who made postcards of La Rochelle and other local places of interest. He seems to have had his peak between the wars. For a few of years I’ve been meaning to check out the address where he operated from, a busy shopping street in town by the market. A couple of weeks ago Rob and I had a few jobs to do in town so we put “look up 66 Rue des Merciers” onto our list. Not an easy task as many of the buildings in the street are not clearly numbered. We started at the wrong end of the road so the excitement mounted as we neared our goal.

Number 66 is a narrow terraced building and today houses a cheap handbag shop (yes, in la Rochelle!). We stood across the road and scrutinised the building looking for clues. We were disappointed at first. Only the wooden beam over the door and window of the shop was of any interest. Looking up above the first floor windows I could just about make out some old faded lettering. So faint that if you didn’t know what it said you couldn’t guess: R Bergevin. It was like finding buried treasure.

If you want to see what we saw, start from the market, it’s a couple of buildings down on your left. Best viewed from across the road

Angels.

I was reading about Angels last week. People who have seen them and been helped by them. Were they Angels or were they ordinary people who were in the right place at the right time? Are Angels living amongst us disguised as human beings.?

I’m the kind of person who is quite happy to see David Copperfield flying around on stage. I know that it is an illusion but I enjoy it just the same. I don’t need ‘explanations’ So I enjoyed reading and thought it was good that there is always hope in the most incredible situations.

What if we are all Angels ourselves? Think about it, we are given the opportunity to help someone most days. Holding a door open for someone who’s loaded with shopping. Being someone’s friend. Our smile might just help someone in the depths of despair hang on a little longer and get past their unhappiness. It’s not too difficult, is it?

The writing of this post has been in my head for a couple of days. This morning I was checking out my stats and saw that there was a link to Anji Patchwork from Lori’s blog. A bit strange as I haven’t popped by there for a while. What I found was a post which fits perfectly. Read it and see what you think.

The Cakewalk

When I was five years old I went directly to my mum’s friend’s house as usual on a Friday afternoon after school. I was very excited, we’d listened to some new music at school. The Cakewalk. Imagine cakes walking! Mum’s friend Chris was married to a musician and he sat me on his lap at the piano and played if for me straight off.

I couldn't believe my luck this evening. Claude Debussy playing the Cakewalk himself

The summer of ‘76

That’s 33 years ago now. It was very hot and I was reading Lord of the Rings and weighed 8st 7lbs (an important detail in those days).

One weekend in July I got on the coach after work and went to stay with my friend, Sheila, in London. Both of our boyfriends were working abroad at the time so we decided to get together for a weekend. Sheila and her friends lived in a squat. To my surprise it looked like an ordinary house – except that “Clark Kent lives here” was written on the front door. There was an outside loo (pull the chain and run) it was a very hot summer a row of certain plants were growing tall against one of the garden walls.

We visited pubs and drank pints so we didn’t need to queue up at the bar so often. I remember walking down the Portobello road. As a country bumpkin, I couldn’t get enough of the many different types of people out for the afternoon. We stopped and bought hunks of bread; over laden with cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms and toasted –a kind of pizza – for lunch. Everyone was so nice and friendly. I wonder if it’s like that now.

A weekend doesn’t last for long, but I’ve always remembered that one.

Where are you now?