Day out in Toulouse

It wasn't a day out as such - more a few hours wrapped around a RDV at a clinic but it was a beautiful day and exploration of a city was an interesting idea.

I don't really know Toulouse despite numerous visits - we used to stay in The Grand Balcon right on the Place du Capitol when we were vaguely thinking amount a move to France. The hotel was amazing - about fifteen quid a night with lumpy old beds and ancient plumbing; sadly now revamped into something classy and the rooms more like 150.00 quid a night.

Arriving on the train early in the morning, I wandered the quiet streets ending up at The Capitol where a group of Japanese women tourists were having a sing, lead by one lady with a ukulele.

After a hot choc at a café that should have the award for the most 'bof' manageress in the whole of South-West France I walked on to the Abattoir art gallery which was closed for the day but spent a long time watching the rolling Garonne pass by. It struck me that the water I was observing would at some point later that day be arriving in Bordeaux where my son currently lives. And I texted him as much, him being a muser too . . .

A number of tents had sprung up along the main boulevard near the art gallery. I gave some money to a small boy who was sitting with a broken bowl in hand, then asked him where the family were from. Albania, he said.

Rather disturbingly, just on the other side of the fence from the tents the already manicured municipal gardens were being re-planted. Slightly wrong priorities?

                 

I found a street I hadn't noticed before which was full of shops selling wildly unnecessary items but I did love this glass jelly fish lamp. . . 

                

Then it was time for my RDV with a neck specialist. I've had this thing for nearly thirty years now, and have been huffed at, almost jeered at and generally been ignored as it's a small but niggly pain that seems to stem from virtually nothing, and has just got worse over time. THIS doctor was a revelation. He spent about half an hour carefully listening then did lots of thorough examinations and pinpointed where the pain is coming from. Sadly, nothing much can be done but at least I know what it is; it's not life-threatening and I can go back and see him after another IRM scan which I, oddly, rather like - see some post, way back about being in one of these machines.

After this, I found a tiny little lost-in-the-70s Indian restaurant and enjoyed onion pakora, fish curry and 'delice' de mango for about nine euros. Needing a sit down rather than walking, I went back to the river and water gazing - amazing quantities of river weed covered in tiny white flowers or shells? difficult to tell at a distance. On the other bank, huge works were happening, including re-pointing the kilometres of Toulouse pink brick walls - massive scaffolding with about six people working.  

                

the Monika Indian restaurant

a bit of repointing

very tenacious ash tree

On the way back to the station I noticed this fabulous bit of late? Art Deco and this recently repainted 'Guggenheim' 50s car park. Not just the city of the 'rose' brick. I shall return and explore further.

  

Bonjour, Toulouse!

Yeah well, it wasn't exactly the same numbers as the London Stop-Brexit rally but a few of us Brits in Southern France got together and with permission, bien sur, of Toulouse Mairie, were allowed to make our own small version in the main square.
A few hundred leaflets handed out, much tweeting/Face-booking, and poster holding later we acknowledged it had been worth doing. All the French who had stopped and talked with us were either for Britain remaining within the EU, or happy to discuss the subject, sometimes not really knowing much about it.
The poster announcing that London is officially recognised as the Fifth biggest French city, just before Nice, was read many times with many very raised eyebrows.
No one told us to get off back to the rock and apart from one bloke on a bicycle who methodically made one of the A5 leaflets into a paper aeroplane, curled his lip slightly and threw the dart at us, there was no animosity, no slavering Frexiteers, just polite and supportive interest.

                                    

I knew there was a reason I kept the Carnaval hat.

One year and a couple of months

Last summer a new band was formed (along with, no doubt, about 500,000 other ones) but special to us as our son was the drummer.
From tentative attempts at a few Muse songs they soon progressed to thirty or so numbers, still mostly covers but with a sprinkling of their own compositions.
I hadn't seen them play for a couple of months but went along to a gig last night and was amazed at the recent progress they have made - confidence (but not too cool to forget that the audience need to be included - a problem with many French 'fete' bands) great energy, and an exciting display of what many, many hours of practice can produce, (thankfully we have very tolerant neighbours . . .)
So, the end of summer looms and the band will disperse a little - two members to Toulouse, our son to Carcassonne, but they are determined to keep it together, regular meet ups and scouting for possible venues. This time next summer . . . Toulouse Zenith?

An extract of The F.E.W playing 'Yogurt song' last evening. Note Freddie the bassist at the end realising he has bloodied his strings after an enthusiastic previous Funk number.

Building 52

I have passed this ancient windmill, or rather the walls of a windmill many times while driving to Toulouse.
                                              

This morning, on a dog walk, we decided to actually walk up to it, and could instantly appreciate why it was constructed there, being completely to exposed to all species of wind - east, west, north and south.
If a building could think and recall, I wonder what its visual and audial memory of the landscape would be.
The field it sits in is currently ploughed up for winter; the residual brown stalks and seeds of sunflowers still scattered across the clods. The sounds are of an occasional car speeding along to the next village. Perhaps, when the mill was functioning the view would have been wheat and woodlands and the distant mountain chain; the sounds, millstones grinding and horses hauling grain sacks.

On the doorway's stone blocks I noticed this beautiful carved name: early graffiti? or perhaps the mill owner or worker's signature; someone who had sat enjoying the view of the grey-blue Pyrenees at the end of a day's work. The same view we appreciated this morning on a perfect, early autumn day.

Hoover bag rant

Or, I should say Miele bag rant as that's the type we possess at the moment.
We inherited a smallish pale yellow aspirator from my mother when she moved to a home and no longer needed to personally remove dust from her surroundings.
It's absolutely fine as hoovers go, except it's almost impossible to find bags for it in a shop, well, actually totally impossible, unless I wanted to drive to Toulouse for a day and mooch around a hundred different electrical sheds in the hope of stumbling upon the right type. Which I don't.
I thought it would be possible to locate the bags in our local mega-supermarket, but no, as the thing is now about eight years old now and probably well out of fashion: I mean yellow, really!
The bag crisis looms every few months or so as we don't go in for huge amounts of dust removal generally - a broom mainly suffices, but as summer approaches and our guest room becomes inhabited, a higher level of dust-attention is needed.
Last time Mark bought some 'fits any size' type bags which were okay apart from a bit of leaking, but even those seem to have disappeared from the supermarket.
Yesterday, I crept towards Amazon knowing it would be the only choice whereupon Mark decided there must be another way - a small local company, somewhere. Nope. But he did find a business called 'Aspirateur sacs sont nous' or something, so I scanned the page(s) in the hope of finding the correct bags.

There were over four hundred types of Miele hoovers listed. Four . . . h u n d r e d. Why?
Why cannot each company make one basic model and upgrade it every few years or so?
Do you really need a hoover called Black Pearl, or Sunshine, or Big Cat and Dog (I liked this one) Passion - (just feel that vibration . . .) Best friend, Blue Moon (singing model?) Champagne! Hey, Honey . . . I've done the hoovering - break out that bottle of Dom. P; Exclusive - what? no one else is going to have one on this planet? Flamenco, Exquisite  (a chunk of wheely plastic, exquisite?) Indian Summer - WHAT?! Meteor - mm, sounds a bit heavy, Jazz, Noblesse - Oh, for God's sake who has the job of naming these things . . .
Anyway, more than four hundred, but not our one.
So, Amazon, and Mark started slipping into the consumer trap - 'Actually, do we need to buy a new bagless type'?
No we do not. I will fabricate our own bags out of old pants if necessary.

Building No 37

One of a million or so small concrete buildings that haunt train station platforms.
I wondered how many people have sat in here thinking about their destination, escape from someone/something, or perhaps thinking of nothing, mind blank with the routine of another day at work.
I had a sudden image of the three wise monkeys in human form sitting on the three central seats.
Someone stifling a yawn, someone asleep, and someone with headphones firmly clamped to their head.

Odd, how climate effects the aspect of a building. If this had been in Havana, it might have contained a small lively bar; vibrant beer posters slapped across the walls and an absurd shining 1960's car parked outside. However, it was in a small, empty train station somewhere south of Toulouse on a damp Sunday afternoon in March: no music, no beer and only a small rusting Renault five in the station car park.