Artists a suivre 2011

WELL DONE Victoria, Caty and the team for the brilliant event, as ever.
As I ran a similar art trail for several years in the U.K, I know how much work it takes, how much free time one gives and how much you want to thump the odd moaner who has to have their say . . .
Stress levels were at a high point in the hothouse (see next post) as we worked our way through art expo with sound installation, (with lovely Sue doing salon du thé) samba gig (in the rain in a barn), improvised music, rock gig, Baroque music, jazz....
I loved my venue, the 'vestiere' at Couiza: high ceilings, no yellow walls, and the sound worked really well in there. I had to stay each night as the security was pretty basic, but enjoyed waking up in the loft-like space before hastily shoving the futon away as people arrived.
Here be photos, in no great order.
Samba gig: Gawd, and blimmin ek never 'ad to play in a dirty great barn before . . .
Expo space and salon du thé
Les Malfonctionnaires gig, Saturday night at les pres en bulles. (Me singing - third pic down).
Today. Clearing up and sleeping.

Seasonal fruit stress

Mark suffers badly from this. I have a milder form, but nevertheless it kicks in around early to middle May depending on the weather/how the trees are feeling.
The first attack is cherry time. We watch the blossom come and go, salivate as the tiny green fruit swell and the suddenly they are ripe, everywhere; people kindly bring them, ask you to take as many as you wish from their trees, the fruit calls out as you pass: "eat us" before we fall and are wasted.
Added to Marks heavy work load, a hernia op chez moi, and certain areas of the house reconstruction, the increasing pile of cherries wait be stoned. The special plastic box comes out - its yearly airing, and everyone is sticky with purple and red juice for a while.
Pots of rich dark jam in the shed, a happy feeling that winter will be all the better for increasing the jam stocks.
We failed this year with strawberry. SAD. Next stop apricot.

Welcome!

Superb entrance to an abode in 'point courte' another favourite seaside haunt at Sete.
Translates roughly to: s***heads keep out.

More blog soon, too much going on . . .

OOps

aww,
blogger won't upload the film, too big? too Hogarthian? Anyway, here's two photos of the event including one of Dr Mark Wyatt Lockett conducting band of urchins.

Fracas de Limoux

Fracas - loud, chaotic sound - something like that. I thought the name sat nicely between 'Fecos de Limoux' (carnaval) and Fricassée de Limoux, the local dish of pork and beans.
Here we are, (photo seems to have moved to following post . . .) performing for 'Toques et Clochers' on a beautiful Saturday in Limoux before the surging hoards of piss-heads appeared.
As we are, none of us, svelte 23 year old Brazilians, the Dickensian look seemed a good option. A unique (I think) melange of pulsing street sounds and 'my old man said follow the van'.
Perfect day for the grand drinking binge; seemed to be good humour all around and some excellent street acts, notably the wonderful 'Compagnie Stromboli' theatre of the absurd, of whom I sadly have no pics. Only heard one ambulance in the night, and pretty much the only reminders the day after were a few abandoned socks littered around the streets...?

The boy done good

Ezra with CHEQUE for first prize in children's section of the Toques et Clochers painting competition. So proud I nearly dropped the camera . . .
Thought they might have given the parents a 'well done' for making him prize in the form of a magnum of blanquette, but a most generous prize quand meme, thanks S.D'Arques.

Grand design

Just in case we forget how amazing nature is.
Makes me feel somehow hopeful, despite us unloading toxins into the air/soil/sea, that the natural world will prevail. Talking of dumping stuff in the sea, I read with amazement that the hole in the crippled Japanese nuclear power station has been blocked with a mixture of . . . sawdust, newspaper and a form of liquid glass. I remember doing exactly that to my cousin's red Spitfire in about 1976, surely things must have have moved on a bit?
Anyway back to the vegetable featured above.
Err, not much really, except that when I see these bright green kings of the legume world I always have to take a few minutes of silent contemplation over their sheer magnificence. Ezra says he saw an 'expose' about them in the Paris science museum. Apparently, even under super-magnification, the spirals keep on spiralling, seemingly into infinity. Well, it makes a change from thinking what is outside our universe, where does it end? etc . . . but similarly brain-taxing on a slightly different scale.
Enough. Back to the washing up, invoicing and cat hair removal. Safe, small activities of no wonder.