Play has been abandoned at Edgbaston

Having spent the morning in the company of Jonathan Agnew and assorted Australians, the household is plunged into disorder by the news that play has been abandoned for the day and we all have to find something else to do.

Why cannot Agnew et al continue to talk? It is always interesting...you learn all sorts of things like Geoffrey Boycott describing his hotel in India as containing the 'corridor of uncertainty', and if, like me, you have been interested in cricket for years, you hear the background to things that puzzled you at the time...a time when the press was reticent, there was no Twitter and real men did not ride pedaloes. Test Match Special on the BBC is rightly an institution, though I do not agree with the widely held view that it is better when rain stops play and the commentators are driven back on their endless resources of gossip and reminiscence.

However, plans have to be changed....and so, if we are going out, will be the clothes. The ladies are already heading for the bathrooms, the hum of the hairdryer will soon be heard in the land and the men are thrashing out a plan of attack. It runs rather like this...
The ladies haven't hit the beer at lunchtime, so they will be driving.
That means they will want to go shopping or sightseeing.
How can the men contrive to avoid the former and make the latter tolerable?
There is a further factor......it is raining cats and dogs.

That factor knocks out the favourite solution, a run along the Loire and a visit to a chateau with a pleasant bar nearby where the men can continue hitting the beer while the ladies soak up the culture. No one wants to sit inside in a French bar.
We could stay at home and read, watch television and listen to music. We could, but by now the ladies have changed and done their hair, so we're going out.
What do you do to amuse your visitors on a wet day in rural France? They've bought their wine, so winetasting is out, the men revolt at the mere mention of Ikea, the Resistance museum is off the agenda as far as this party is concerned.....mention of the French army as the sunburned armpit brigade is sure to be made and someone at the museum will understand and we will be banned, historic buildings bring the men out in hives, so what are we to do?
The answer is a long drive, but well worth it and as the ladies are driving, they have the last word.



The chateau d'Oiron.





This is a chateau well off the beaten tourist track, south of the river Loire, built in one go in the sixteenth century so not a ragbag of styles, with a well preserved interior. However, the main point of interest, and the whole point of this visit, is the art collection. Well, yes, art, but not art as we know it.


The chateau is an outpost of the national museum services and houses a collection of modern interpretations of the 'cabinets of curiosities' which were apparently popular with the upper crust of the renaissance. There is one reproduction of the renaissance cabinet upstairs in one of the towers, but the rest are the works of modern artists, including one room resounding to the buzzing of myriad insects. How French. The video which I hope I have managed to download properly will show you more, including the set of crockery featuring the profiles of the local people which is used every summer to serve a lunch for the models...they find their place at the table by identifying their profile. What happens if your nose is broken or you lose your teeth in the interim is something I prefer not to consider.
There used to be an exhibit involving glasses of wine balanced without any visible means of support, but the room was closed this time. Probably knew who was coming. Still, there is plenty else to have the alarm bells sounding as our party tours the building...the sphere was inevitable and I should have known better than to have let the men get near it, but, wonder of wonders, this visit to a chateau is a success!

The ladies loved the architecture and the frescos, while for everyone the art provided a subject of commentary all the way home and well into the evening. Not all of it complimentary, but commentary none the less.


As we unloaded the cars, I noticed that one of the men had his portable radio in his hand. I eyed him and he said sheepishly

'Well, I know they said play was abandoned at Edgbaston...but I couldn't help hoping....'

Taking a liberty with equality, set to music

Image via Wikipedia

This day of celebration of music in all its forms started in France and has travelled round the world...for once a great example of France's civilising mission. I look forward to it and start planning where to go as soon as I can find out what's on, which is not always so easy if you are, like me, on the borders of different regions, so that the local newspaper might well cover something happening seventy kilometres away at the other end of my department, but not something ten kilometres away which happens to be in the neighbouring region. Checking on the internet is not always so easy either..you have national sites, departmental sites, tourist office sites and something is always bound to slip through the net so that you see it reported as a great success the week after it has happened. I ring up friends and we swop information...it's quicker.

This year, our village hall is hosting hip hop. Given that most people in the village are of a certain age and can never have heard of that form of music, I suspect intervention by the culture committee of the local authority. It will have been an interesting evening depending on whether the clients of the bar two villages away that deals in drugs decided to participate. As yet, the grapevine has not borne fruit. My postlady is on holiday and the village correspondant of the local rag is notoriously slow to report. As Didier said once,
'By the time he's reported your Silver Wedding, it's time for the Golden one!'

Friends suggested coming to stay with them for the night and attending a flamenco evening in a local chateau...well, local to them, thus the overnight stay.
We had a great day, caught up with the news, pottered round their garden, had lunch followed by a siesta and then tarted ourselves up to go out.
The chateau is a wonderful sixteenth century building, now occupied by an outpost of the Museum of Modern Art which means that it can no longer host the best Fete de la Musique that I ever attended, where every one of the many rooms had a continuously changing programme so that under the painted beams of the royal bedroom you could have a piano recital, a local choir belting out 'Wimeweh' and renaissance music in the course of an hour, while next door in the great hall you could have a chamber ensemble, folk music and the harpsichord. Too good to last.
The flamenco was to be held in the loggia under the painted hall and we faced the typical dilemma of the French night out. Advertised to begin at eight o'clock, we knew that nothing would start before nine, but, given that there is no rake on the floor, in order to see, we would need to get good front seats. We decided to go early, put programmes on our seats and have a picnic in the grounds...not quite Glyndebourne and not 'le dejeuner sur l'herbe' either!

On arrival, we marked our seats, in the second row, and were about to make off when the occupants of the first row said that people who had done so had had their programmes removed by the staff and had lost their places. We had our picnic on the uncomfortable folding seats instead, but the salmon roulade and the Saumur sparkling wine didn't lose much by the change of venue. Time went on...people assembled...the loggia filled up...the dancers were visible on the low stage, checking their movements....but we were still waiting. Nine o'clock, quarter past, half past nine...and then the main event of the night swung into action.
Staff bearing chairs came scurrying down the loggia to place them between the front row and the stage. Several minutes afterwards, a party of thin women and men in suits followed and occupied the said seats. Among them our friends recognised their local deputy and his 'lovely assistant', together with a bevy of departmental councillors. The front row was furious, we were furious, several rows back were furious. We watched an evening of wonderful, inspiring flamenco between the heads of the local politicos and their fixers.

As we went out to the car park, I ranged alongside one of the front row occupants, who was still furious.
'You know,' he said ' these so and sos didn't even pay for their tickets like the rest of us. I asked the girl on the desk and she said that they got in free, because the department and the state gave grants towards staging the event.'

The contempt of our masters for those of us who pay to keep them in the style to which they wish to remain accustomed is without limits.

It was, despite the talking heads, a wonderful event and no village or even small town could have afforded to book such a troupe of performers, so, bravo for la Fete de la Musique!