Willkommen Bienvenue Welcome

Welcome, gentle readers.

This is an everyday tale of regular folk, who moved from Sheffield to the deepest Corrèze in France Profonde and thence to the rather more cosmopolitan Lot in search of something… different. We certainly found it.

The Lot is an area of outstanding natural beauty. Reputedly, a famous TV globetrotter was asked where, of all the places in the world he had visited, he might return to. He answered, ‘The Lot’.

Fans of Channel 4’s Grand Designs will know that we built a somewhat quirky straw bale house-with-a-view here in the Lot, not far from the celebrated Dordogne river. You can read all about it in my book, Bloody Murder On The Dog's Meadow, or watch the re-runs of the programme on More 4, or view it on You Tube.

After a break in the proceedings to write a book or two, this blog now takes the form of an everyday journal. Sometimes things happen, sometimes they don't (but the art school dance goes on forever). I hope it will give you an entertaining insight into what it's like to live in a foreign country; what it's like in the slow lane as an ex-pat Brit in deepest France.

I shall undertake to update this once a month, unless absent on leave. Comments always welcomed, by the way, but I do tend to forget what buttons to click in order to answer them.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Stop the Week 1

‘This week oy am wurring Dolce & Gabana jeans passed on to me boy moy discerning nephew, Bas. He’s good to his old ooncle is moy nephew, Bas.’
Don’t you reckon there’s nothing like a good western? My daughter and I watched a great one over the course of two extended suppers in front of the telly (a thing which of course, you understand, we rarely do in this civilised home). Robert Aldrich’s ‘Ulzana’s Raid’ is a thoughtful, morally complex film starring the incomparable Burt Lancaster. It’s cavalry versus the Apaches set in the desert of southern Arizona and I commend it most heartily to you.
I was never a big fan of Led Zeppelin for some reason. But I watched an hour long programme on Robert Plant (‘In his own words’) and I really warmed to the curly haired gentleman. So I borrowed the hit record he made with Alison Krause from our extraordinary music library in Brive. Behold, it is just about as good as they say. Their voices work together in wondrous harmony and the music is often uplifting.
This week, too, I have been re-discovering The Doors, trying to get over that feeling of bombast that I often associate with Jim Morrison. ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘Riders On The Storm’ are still matchless, but there’s much more to them besides.
The helio-eccentric Sun Ra
On Monday morning over coffee, I allowed myself the time to listen to – really listen to – a wonderful album by Lloyd Miller & the Heliocentrics that goes by the same title. It came out a few months ago on Strut, that most cultivated of small independent labels. Lloyd Miller himself is a bit of an independent: a maverick figure on the periphery of the jazz scene. It’s a little like ‘Sun Ra visits the Middle East’, but without the avant-garde assaults of the star ship Arkestra. Just beautiful, captivating, atmospheric jazz of the first order.
I’ve also been re-discovering Duke Pearson’s ‘The Right Touch’ on Blue Note. It has been gathering dust on the shelves for far too long. There are seven tight Pearson compositions beautifully arranged for an octet that features Stanley Turrentine’s bluesy tenor and Freddie Hubbard’s elegant trumpet. Anyone who likes the music of Oliver Nelson should investigate this. Forthwith!
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