Just what I always wanted…

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aqueducts, Chateau de Maintenon, Madame de Maintenon

A few weeks ago my daughter and I went to the Chateau de Maintenon.  It was no carefully planned decision; we were staying the weekend at Rambouillet and after a hard morning’s sightseeing and a good lunch the OH declared he was retiring back to his room with Terry Pratchett, leaving the daughter and I to pick somewhere to visit.

As we didn’t have a guide book our choices had to be made from thumbnail descriptions on the tourist leaflet and we picked the Chateau de Maintenon basically because it was easy to get to.  The château is in Maintenon – naturally, and was the home of Madame de M., Louis XIV’s mistress and almost certainly his morganatic second wife (no documents exist to prove there was a marriage but it’s generally accepted that there was).  Madame de M was supposed to have been very beautiful and must also have been somewhat of a tough cookie.  She started off as governess to the children of Louis’s previous mistress Madam de Montespan, knocked her off her perch and established herself as the King’s mistress.  Madame de M, who was very pious, then persuaded the King that his immortal soul was in danger through all this fornication and the best solution, now he was a widower, was to marry her.  How many royal mistresses would even have thought of that?  She was also  much given to good works and established a school for the impoverished daughters of noble families, where yet again she showed that she was endowed with a certain steeliness of character.  She once had a real scaffold erected as a means of controlling the pupils.  Fortunately, it was never used.

Her château is right in the middle of town, eminently practical in the days when it took so long to travel anywhere, and the original part is surprisingly small for somewhere Louis XIV used to stay.  She’s said to have suffered from the cold and deliberately chose small, sunny rooms for her own apartments because they were easier to heat.  After several winters spent in French houses with inadequate insulation I sympathise.

As happened so often, the château was extensively “improved” in the nineteenth century with a smart Gothic facade and several large rooms, big enough to reflect the importance of a Second Empire Duke, including a gallery modelled on those in Versailles and Chateau d’Eu were added.  I suppose one day we’ll come to appreciate French nineteenth century taste with all its polished wood, gold leaf, red velvet and delight in ornamentation but I still prefer the simpler charms of the older parts of the château which has been left fairly untouched.

Luckily the improving Duke appears to have been content to leave the garden alone.  It was designed by La Notre, one of the best known landscape gardeners, in 1676.  He must have been an extraordinarily hard-working man, every garden we visited that weekend claimed to have been designed by him.  There seem to be even more gardens by La Notre than there are beds slept in by good Queen Bess herself.  This one though is absolutely gorgeous.  The formal part is not particularly big and is laid out with lawns and paths in swirls and curls around flowerbeds which include the most deliciously smelly pick roses.  Then beyond the formal garden there’s the grand vista which every decent château had to have.  But this one’s a bit different.  It starts conventionally enough with the all important water feature, so beloved at the time, in this case a canal which leads the eye towards the distance and… an aqueduct.  An aqueduct only about 500 metres from the château.

Louis XIV came up with a grand scheme to build a canal from the Eure to Versailles to provide water for the fountains and the route went straight across the bottom of the château’s gardens.  The designer suggested the most practical way of getting the water across the château grounds was via a siphon but Louis, not adverse to blowing his own trumpet, demanded that something to reflect the grandeur of the king must be erected, and came up with the idea of an aqueduct modelled on the Pont de Gard.  But bigger.  The Sun King had to be capable of doing better than the Romans.

The aqueduct was started in 1685 and three years later the King made Madame de Maintenon a marquise as compensation for the damage being done to her grounds by the building works.  Then the money began to run out due to the King’s passion for fighting wars.  The plans for the aqueduct had already been scaled down and by 1695 the work stopped completely.  The King was left with a half-finished aqueduct he had no use for.  So he did what men have done for centuries when they don’t now what to do with something – he gave it to the wife.

I’d love to know what Madame de Maintenon’s reaction was on having her husband’s unwanted possession so generously bestowed on her.  Did she grit her teeth, he was the King after all, and think that it wasn’t everyone who could boast of an aqueduct in their garden while thanking him profusely, but perhaps not entirely sincerely.  Or, being one tough lady after all, did she grimace and say, ‘Well actually Sunny, when you said you were giving me something really big made of rocks I thought we were talking diamonds…’?

 

One reason why I love going to Bordeaux…

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Bordeaux

…the weather has to be truly horrible not to get a rush of pleasure at the sight of the waterfront, the pont pierre, the stunning miroir d’eau on the quais in front of la place de la Bourse and so much else that makes up my adopted city.

Though I should think that the tourism office of Toulouse might be a little teed off at the music to this video – Toulouse is known as the Ville Rose because of the pinkish brick of many of its houses.  Perhaps there is no such thing as honour amongst tourist departments.

The Parisot Literary Festival…

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Amanda Hodgkinson, Dalmatians de Puech Barrayre, Martin Walker, Parisot Literary Festival

…was absolutely terrific.  I had a whale of a time.  It was really nice meeting Vanessa who’d invited me to speak at the festival – up to now we’d only known each other through our blogs, all the events I went to were super, my hosts who had me to stay for the night were super and I think my part didn’t go too badly either.  Put it this way; no-one threw rotten fruit or sighed loudly.

Parisot is a small but obviously very lively commune in the Tarn and Garonne and despite the filthy weather – pelting rain and temperatures that seemed to be dropping by the minute the Parisot library was already filling up when I arrived before Amanda Hodgkinson’s talk in the afternoon.  I took Amanda’s novel, 22 Britannia Road, with me to Brussels recently, expecting it to last me the weekend.  It was such a good read that I finished it on Sunday morning and had to face the dreadful prospect of travelling back on Ryanair without anything to read.  Luckily my daughter arrived with an emergency book supply so the panic was soon over.

Amanda is absolutely charming and gave us a wonderful and funny talk about her writing, moving to France and getting close to concrete mixers, how the germs of the plot for 22 Britannia Road sprang out of stories she heard her grandmother and great-grandmother telling each other, and related one or two of the more unusual happenings on her American book tours.  She also read us various passages from her books which was sheer pleasure as she’s such a good reader.  My one regret about the weekend is that I didn’t get more of a chance to talk to her.

Amanda was followed by the urbane and witty Martin Walker, author of the Bruno, Chief of Police series set in the Perigord, who talked about his journalistic career, his French holiday house and the personalities in the local area who have shaped the characters in his books, especially the real life model for Bruno.  The fictional Bruno is muscular, slim, the flesh and blood version is ahem, a bit more rounded…

As Martin, like Amanda had been, was surrounded by an enthusiastic audience telling him how much they’d enjoyed his talk, I was horribly conscious that I had two very hard acts to follow…

Funnily enough, most of the nerves that bedeviled me all last week had largely disappeared and I was left with a que sera sera feeling of I’d do my best and if it wasn’t that good at least I’d tried.  Everyone involved in organising the festival and in the audience was so nice that it would have been difficult to feel nervous in such a friendly atmosphere.

There was a ‘Meet the authors’ dinner that evening which had a terrific, relaxed atmosphere and was a super way to end the day.

Richard and Anita, whom I was staying with, live in the most gorgeous old schoolhouse.  They were looking for something that didn’t need much work, not a near decrepit shell, but when they opened the crumbling shutters in the old schoolroom they fell in love.  Not surprisingly: this is the view from outside my bedroom (and it was a filthy day), looking towards NajacAs Richard said, they’ve got all the best parts of a château – enjoying looking at it without having to look after it.  The schoolhouse also has a wonderful oak staircase, nothing fancy or grand, but a thing of beauty because it is so perfectly made and proportioned. The bannister rail has been worn smooth by years of hands rubbing it and it so tactile that I felt like going up and down just for the sheer pleasure of feeling it under my palm.

The next morning Anne Dyson, who used to run the Greedy Goose cookery school, gave a demonstration of making canapes.  Sadly I couldn’t stay to taste everything as I had to get ready for my own bit but I can tell you her savoury filled choux buns were scrummy and something I’ll be trying myself.

In the audience for my talk was Sally Clegg, the breeder of a magnificent line of Dalmatians, who gave us her retired show dog Jez – one of the best presents ever.  Jez died, aged 14, several years ago but her indomitable spirit lives on in her grandson Flynn and great-great granddaughter Desi. I haven’t seen Sally for about five years so it was lovely to catch up, she has a Facebook group for Dalmatians de Puech Barrayre which is sheer dog porn – picture after picture of beautiful dogs!

Vanessa introducing me and being nice enough to say Up To No Good had made her laugh.

My speech – what can I say?  I didn’t dry up, I managed not to have to read from my cards unless I was quoting directly – naturally I realised afterwards that there was quite a lot I’d missed out though as I spoke for over half an hour it was probably a good thing.  Amanda and Martin’s tremendous talks the day before even worked to my advantage as they held diametrically opposing views on writing matters such as how detailed a plot synopsis you need to do before you start and I was able to refer back to them.   People laughed a bit, nodded in agreement with what I was saying a few times and as I’ve mentioned no-one threw tomatoes or remembered half way through that they had something better to do.  They even asked questions.  So yes, I was pretty pleased.  Let’s be honest, I was delighted.  I hadn’t made a complete T of myself.

If I’ve used a lot of superlatives in this it’s because I had one of the best weekends in ages; I’m still riding high.  I hope that Vanessa, Gina – the powerhouse behind getting the Parisot Literary Festival off the ground, and everyone else involved in it is riding high too because it was terrific.  It’s incredible to think that it was the first, everything went so smoothly that you’d believe they’d been doing it for years.  And I’d like to thank them for inviting me to take part.

Chasing my tail…

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International Club of Bordeaux, Parisot Literary Festival

… and shortly about to graduate onto tearing my hair out.  I’m juggling getting the International Club of Bordeaux’s monthly newsletter, The Grapevine, ready to go out next week (with practice it’ll be a doddle but as this is only the second issue there’s a lot of glitches to be sorted out) with preparing my speech for the Parisot Literary Festival this weekend.  And if that wasn’t enough there’s Life getting in the way too- walking the dogs, food shopping, talking to friends when they ring up, doing the housework, finding a set of keys my daughter left behind and posting them to her Collissimo…

It’s at this stage of blind panic that I’m starting to wonder why I ever agreed to appear at the Literary Festival – believe me I’ve been wondering ever since I was asked why they wanted me.  The other authors appearing are much better known than I am but at least I’m on last.  I think (hope) most people will have gone home by then.

I said at the beginning of last year that I was going to start pushing myself.  I’ve certainly done that here but actually I’m rather looking forward to it.  The idea of the speech terrifies me, I used to give short seminars as part of my job but that was a long time ago and there’s a lurking fear that I might have lost the knack.  Let’s be honest here, in the middle of the night it’s more of an absolute certainty.  Even so I’m thoroughly enjoying myself doing the planning and the festival itself (apart from my contribution) sounds as if it’s going to be terrific.  I’m getting to meet a couple of authors whose work I really like and also meet Vanessa whom I’ve only known through blogging (she’s pretty busy herself right now), stay with someone who runs a creative writing group (lots of picking of brains planned there), get taken out to dinner and it’s all in a really pretty part of France that I love.

What’s not to like about all of that?  Apart from my bit of course?

The giddy limit…

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Mice

We have a mouse problem.  A problem exacerbated by the fact that while all three of the felines who turn up for several square meals a day are keen hunters they only do outside, not under the sink.  So last night when a mouse popped out from under the dishwasher intending to see if anything had fallen out of the vegetable rack Kevin had a large ‘Not On Duty’ sign in between his ears and barely allowed my shouts of ‘Get Out of Here’ to disturb his entirely undeserved beauty sleep.

The local mice seem to look on our house as the Welcome Saloon.  They have the measure of the cats, they must know that we don’t use poison and there’s at least one super-mousebrain amongst them because I swear they’ve worked out how to get the chocolate off a mouse trap without springing it. What other explanation is there for all the empty but charged traps?

The final straw came this morning.  I heard shouts from the OH and found him in the downstairs shower room pointing at the loo.  Inside was a mouse doing lengths. Naturally it fell to me to deal with it.

I contemplated fetching Kevin and giving him a lesson in fishing or something.Instead I fetched a soup ladle (anguished exclamations from the OH, ‘We eat from that!’  Me, ‘That’s why we have a sink, disinfectant, washing up liquid…’).  I loathe mice but even the hardest heart would have softened at this small wet thing gamely doing mouse stroke.  It wasn’t particularly willing to be rescued but I scooped it up in the end and put in out in the garden, knowing full well that it’ll probably be back under the sink by this evening.

I reckon I’m pretty tolerant but I absolutely draw the line at sharing my lavatory with rodents so I’m going to redouble my efforts to find one of those live mouse traps which seem to have vanished from the shops.  They work pretty well providing you take the mice for a nice long drive in the car before releasing them.

Of course they’re housemice so it would be unkind to leave them in the middle of nowhere but it’s hardly friendly to let them out to colonise someone else’s house.  On the other hand is there anyone I really don’t like…?

Bordeaux’s new writing group opens for business.

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International Club of Bordeaux, Writers Inc, writing group Bordeaux

Yesterday was the first meeting of the ICB’s writing group – Writers Inc.

I’ve wanted to join a writing group all the time we’ve been in France, I loved the one I went to in London, but there weren’t any writing groups in Bordeaux or reasonably near.  So when the ICB was launched I decided that I’d better offer to start a writing group myself.  This was a somewhat foolhardy decision as it’s 20 years since I’ve attended one, so my knowledge of writing groups is, to say the least, rusty.

Consequently the last week was spent frantically searching for ideas to keep a new group going for two hours, cut with blind fear that no-one was going to turn up and it was all going to be a horrible failure (several people have kindly informed me that another club tried to get a writing group going and it died rapidly.  Almost worse was the worry that there would be several attendees who’d all be much better writers than me and would be wondering, ‘Why on earth does she think she’s equipped to run this?’

In the event there were three of us – small but enough to get discussions going (we should have been six but two couldn’t get back to Bordeaux on time and one was ill), and after the initial nervous few minutes I loved it. There was an English journalist, much more experienced than I am, who says she should be writing a novel and isn’t (I know the feeling) and a French member of the ICB who declared that for her, coming to a writing group was like going to the dentist, something she felt she ought to do.  She’d have been better off thinking in terms of jumping in the deep end and seeing if she could swim.  She proved, much to her surprise, that she can write.  I think she also rather enjoyed it.

I certainly did.  It was wonderful talking writing of course, but more importantly I’d forgotten how stimulating and what fun those short group exercises can be.  Spending a minute writing down a list of things that you find boring, then four minutes writing about the activity you find the most boring is pretty joyless when you’re on your own.  It’s quite different when you can laugh over how we all selected football and housework.  In a group you can’t cheat and take an extra few minutes to polish up what you’ve written either, the time constraints mean you just have to get on with it and that’s very liberating, especially for someone who usually has a critic sitting on her shoulder croaking, ‘You can do better than that.’

Going home I had a distinct buzz of excitement, we need to grow and I’m sure we will, but as far as I’m concerned Writers Inc already hits exactly the right spots; it’s fun, it’s stimulating and it made me push myself a little.  And you get to meet new people.

Roll on next month’s meeting!

NB.  The illustration at the top is borrowed from Bo’s Cafe Life, the writing life seen through the eyes of an aspiring novelist.  Well worth a look.  And the mug comes from The Literary Gift Company, a favourite site.