And lastly, Part Trois!

Je voudrais ecrire cette accompte en francais, mais je regrette je n'ai aucun acutes, graves ou circumflexes.  Et cedilas!  Oubliez cedilas!  Ils sont trop difficile trouver, comme huitres numero trois en juin.

No, I'm sorry, but my keyboard just is not up to it, helas.

I hope, Gabriel and Florianne, that you are reading this, otherwise my bilingual account sera in vain! :)

Alors, Gabriel poured me a glass of a noble dry white wine with a stony visage.  Or perhaps it was a stony dry white wine with a noble visage.  Either way, it was a beautiful gesture which was much appreciated.  Merci beaucoup, mes amis!  For those who maybe are not as familiar with an assiette des fruits de mer, it is literally a plate of the fruits (the bounty) of the sea.  No two assiettes served on different nights are the same, because the shellfish must be extremely fresh, and usually, the ingredients are only lightly boiled or steamed, either in pure water, or more rarely in barely flavoured stock.  The ingredients are served cold.  At La Procope, as one would expect, with l'Ancienne Comedie Francaise on l'autre side of la street, the presentation is pure theatre.

First, a metal stand is placed on the table by the waiter with a flourish.  Then he approaches with the "Assiette" itself.  This metal plate was elliptical, and about 40 or 50 cm long at its widest dimension.  On the plate was heaped a pile of ice about 10 cm deep, with the sea food arranged around it.  Around the edge were six of the largest oysters I have ever seen.  They were huitres no.3.  (The French Fisheries size their oysters).  At the top of the ice, there were a few prawns, and one or two cooked clams.  Around and on the ice were scallop shells, each of which was heaped with seafood of different species.

To eat this feast was Florianne who borrowed an oyster permanently.  As an English gentleman I could not refuse her, not even one of my molluscs.

The waiter, dressed in black with a very long white apron, placed my cutlery on the table.  There was a spoon, a four pronged fork; a three pronged fork; une fourchette avec deux tines and a pin for the most efficient extraction of the meat from the shells.

The table looked impressive.  Florianne asked if we had in English a saying that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs.  Yes, I replied, but I had missed my chance.  As a suave gentilhomme anglais qui a soixante-onze ans, I should have said that nothing was bigger than my stomach, and therefore I must have very large eyes, and complimented her for saying that.  Instead, I weakly said, "Yes".

She mentioned that La Fontaine had popped in for lunch about two hundred years earlier.  I thought she was going to ask whether he had been at the next table eating oysters.  No, I said, but this gave me a chance to recite the Fox and the Grapes (sounds like an English pub!)

"Certain reynard gascon, d'autres disent normands" and so on.  They looked surprised.  I must have looked surprised, too, as it was sixty years since I had last recited it.  Florianne also recited a fable, but she could continue for longer, as she had last recited it in school only a very few years previously.

Florianne and Gabriel made that evening an evening to remember.  It was possibly my last evening in Paris, and they sprinkled it with gold.  They were both such marvellous company.

And yes, Florianne was correct.  My eyes ARE bigger than my stomach.

A Tale of Two Cafes - Part Deux

As I drank my pastis I reflected that I had found a good place to eat; that I only had 65 euros in my pocket; that I had already spent some of that sum on pastis; that I was about to spend 39 euros on their signature seafood shellfish dish; and that I had better put down the wine list with as much faded grandeur as possible - "but don't you find that white wine overpowers the delicacy of sea food?  I prefer sparkling water - Perrier from choice.  I believe it allows the whelks to BREATHE"

What I didn't know was that I was eating in the oldest cafe in Paris which has its own Wikipedia page ; that I would recite a fable by La Fontaine off by heart; that I would gain some wine, lose an oyster, and listen to La Fontaine as it should be listened to; and wear out my semi colon key.  In the process I would make two friends, one on Facebook, one not, who were from Toulouse and who were celebrating their Fourth Anniversaire.

And so to Gabriel and Florianne, mes felicitations on your Anniversaire; mes condolences for joining in son Anniversaire, (it wasn't me to blame but Florianne and her passion for large oysters.

I was only the catalyst.

The waiter led me to my table.  There was a hard seat, and opposite, a soft banquette, a sofa that continued past several tables.  Florianne was sitting next to me, and opposite, on a hard chair, was Gabriel, who had obviously spent much thought and time on the planning of the evening's proceedings, alas, without taking my possible presence into account.

Fortunately pour moi, both Florianne and Gabriel were from Toulouse, a town known for its love of Concorde.

Fin de Part Deux
End of Part Two

A Tale of Two Cafes

If you like good food, where do you get it?  I'm often asked this, and I can only reply that sometimes I eat well, and sometimes I eat fairly well, but seldom in the last few weeks have I got food poisoning, and looking back on that unhappy evening, I should have known better and played by my own rules.
If you are in a tourist spot like Prague, for instance, I head for the side streets.  There you are more likely to see a good authentic menu.  A narrow street not accessible by tourists on a bus is a good start.  Next I look for a simple menu, preferably without steak on it, or pictures of the dishes.  I found such a place near St Charles Bridge.  The menu was simple, and at the back of the cafe was a television showing an ice hockey game between Canada and the Czech Republic.  At the next table was a Canuck and three Czechs.  After my meal, they invited me to join them. We drank and cheered and booed and drank and a good time was had.  At the end of the evening, they gave me their business cards (they were work colleagues).  How lovely people are.

Two weeks later, I was in the Quartier Latin in Paris.  I wanted an evening meal, but as I walked along the Odeon, I was beset by spruikers wanting me to eat in cafes with pictorial menus and mange biftecks, which was fortunately not what I had in mind.  I set off down a side street as I do if I want to be alone with a good meal and without a bus of tourists, and the world is my oyster (or in France, mon huitre no.3).

I came across this understated place called La Procope.  It looked a bit posh, the diners were glamoreux, but heck, I had 65 euros in my pocket and the world was mon huitre.  Talking of oysters I noticed that they served a very nice "signature" dish of sea food, the famous assiette des fruits des mer.for only 39 euros.  I went in.  "Table for one, please" I asked insouciantly.  I received a veritable torrent of French.

"So you can't fit me in tonight"
"Oh yes sir" said the Maitre d', "but not for a quarter of an hour,  Find a seat and have a drink," so I sat down next to the hatch where the waiters were fetching the drinks from, and had a glass of pastis.

To be continued . . . .

Even Masons have their Vaults

Even Masons have their Vaults

This is the story of two masons and their experiments.  I am quite sure they were friends, certainly collaborators.  One was Head Mason of Tewkesbury Abbey, and the other of Gloucester Abbey, now the Cathedral.  They are only twelve miles apart, well within a day's walk, and they were both built at about the same time.  Both churches were originally built in the Romanesque style, and in the 14th Century the ceilings were vaulted,  Both churches retain lierne vaults, where ribs called liernes sprang from the columns, and the liernes were reinforced by secondary ribs called tiercerons.  This example is in the choir of Tewkesbury Abbey.

The Suns were added at the command of Edward IV after his Yorkist army had won the Battle of Tewkesbury in  1471.  Shakespeare probably saw them (Stratford is only a short distance up the river) and wrote about "These suns of York" in Richard III.  When Isabella, Countess of Warwick died, she had a chantry chapel built.  Time for an experiment.

The ceiling wasn't particularly heavy, and so radial liernes were used in the upper storey.

You can see how the liernes radiated without any need for tiercerons, giving a flatter ceiling.  In this case the liernes would have been fitted with hanging bosses, since broken off.  Downstairs there is a most interesting vault, completely new in design.  Not a lierne vault, but a decorative transition.  Again, there would have been hanging bosses, but the vault itself is unique to this chapel.

The ceiling of this vault is still flatter, but the two masons found that it was still capable of load bearing. In the next chantry chapel to be built, that of Edward Despenser, the "classic" design of an English fan vault is achieved.

These eight tiny vaults, I contend, are the very first English Perpendicular style fan vaults.  They carried the weight of the ceiling.  The Gloucester mason still built his main church with lierne vaulting, but the lighter weight of the cloisters allowed him to use fan vaults.  Sadly, the Tewkesbury cloisters were destroyed, but they may have been fan vaulted, too.  Fan vaulting became the norm in St Georges Chapel Windsor, Eton College, Wells Cathedral and Kings College Cambridge, but I maintain that those eight tiny vaults in Tewkesbury were the first to be built.

It Looks like Rain.

It looks like rain.  Ask any Londoners and they'll tell you it's going to be a lousy summer.with a rotten winter not far behind.  And let's not even mention the English Test cricketers.  They are angry, as I am, of the fuss caused by terrorism: the media droning on and on with the same film clips, the total lack of perspective.  This event at London Bridge is not even a subject of conversation amongst Londoners, but the inconvenience is.

 "Can't get my train from London Bridge?  That's two buses I'll have to catch to get home and it looks like rain."  Most Londoners (and I include myself here) are angry, not scared, and are already sick and tired of the London Bridge Incident.  Buckingham Palace most unusually has a flag at half mast.  Most of the stores in Piccadilly don't.

I was woken at 2 am this morning by my Australian insurance company wondering how I was.  I felt like telling them that I was OK sleeping off a  hangover until they phoned me.  That's how I was.  Angry.  Not trembling with my head under the pillow.  I'm angry, too, about the price of the Underground.   4 pounds 90 for a single journey of five stations!

Several years ago, now, I woke up with a shock to find that I was only four miles from Baghdad.  Four miles up, that is!  As we flew on down towards the Arabian Gulf at sunset, I looked at the Euphrates, with the little towns and villages on its banks, full of honest people with steady jobs and bringing up young families just like ours.  They were Muslims because their ancestors, their families, were Muslims, in the same way most of us became Christians..  The Muslim faith is a moral faith, just as Christianity is a moral faith, and Christianity has spread the same way.  I have the greatest respect for those who live by a moral code, but the particular faith is a choice.  It is not factual, but is an opinion.  The Euphrates reminded me so much of the Severn Vale, with its good and bad families.  The helpers and the helped.  The old people and the children.  Virtually what happened on the Euphrates happened on the Severn.  It is the intolerance of the thoughts of other people that causes the trouble.

It is the extremity of faith: the sureness that you are right and all others are wrong causes the problems.  Some of the biggest jihads, holy wars, were the Crusades, when thousands of Muslims died in the name of religion at the hands of Christians.

Me, I'm a scientist, and I like absolute truth.  I'm suspicious of "I believe that:"  That's only an opinion.

And in the words of Forrest Gump "That's all I have to say about that . . . "