It's not all lolling in the pool

Final despatches from Villa Bonden.

FLYPAPERS Deadly but disgusting. My daughter’s idea. Afterwards she mentioned she had taken photos of three papers full to capacity. Did I want to post them or would I run the risk of the blog attracting a warning as in the early days when I posted an ambiguous piece about handguns? So, no flies. Does the RSPCA have a policy on flypapers?
DSG GEARBOX One of the natural wonders of the area is the Circuit de Navacelles, a huge ragged cirque of rock with a terrifyingly winding and narrow road down to valley level. A perfect application for my car’s DSG gearbox – a six-speed auto with the option to switch to clutchless manual changes. The technique: hold third speed for the 75 m “straights” and flick into second for the hairpin bends. Needs practice, though.
NIGHT SKY At about 11 pm, during our evening ingestions of rosé, what we had previously thought to be a sun-reflecting satellite traversing the night sky was in fact a space station. A satellite would be too small to be seen, we were told by an expert.
BARBECUE My technique has always been to keep on spraying the charcoal with spirit-based fuel until the charcoal submits and agrees to light up. The preferred inflammable in France is a form of gel which works better. A first for me but no doubt it’s been around for decades.
SMOKE ALARM Started screeching and wouldn’t stop. Our son-in-law diagnosed the fault as a failing battery, something which doctors might have said to be “contra-indicated”. He was right though.

The US car - a key to culture

Recent transatlantic exchanges have induced an Americo-nostalgia for the car life we enjoyed there. Our VW station wagon was called a Variant in the UK and – possibly because Variant might be misread as Deviant - a Squareback in the US. It was used, among other things, for the 600-plus mile drive from Pittsburgh to stay with friends in Massachusetts.

Rather than take the narrow, dangerously curvaceous, elderly Pennsylvania Expressway we drove north to the Interstate which passed through comparatively wild scenery. Once Mrs BB spotted a bear; more gruesomely we came across a dead deer with a car, 150 yards away, in hardly any better condition than the deer.

The Squareback cost $5 to fill up which now seems unbelievable. We were guided by well-detailed state maps free from the oil companies. With its engine located virtually above the back wheels, the car was much steadier in snow than, say, a Chevy Impala.

The VW was a vital cultural tool. Some nights we drove perhaps 50 miles to a drive-in movie theatre where more than one feature was shown and I regret we never took advantage of The All-Night Spookathon - Free Doughnut at Dawn. Our two daughters would watch the first movie which had a general rating. Valiantly our elder daughter would try to remain awake for the more adult second movie (“Catch 22” comes to mind) but would flake out into a bed made up in the back with the rear seats folded away.

Sound from the movie came from a box wired to a post and hung on the inside of the car door. It was advisable to replace the box on its post before driving away.

Idle holiday thoughts

THE POOL
The pool was more or less a bagatelle
Despite its pumps and pipes and ad-hoc stock
A cheapjack blue within a rough stone shell
Shabby costume jewel of Languedoc.

Ten metres long, a mere half-dozen strokes
Of breathy crawl to carve a hand-strewn wake
Each length an overtaken drain evokes
The body’s needs, imagination’s brake.

But pools – all pools – enclose an inner space
That holds the swimmer like an ambered fly.
Seen from within the water’s silvered face
Casts back a diamond’s faceted reply.

A gesture from a bubble-beaded hand
Reaching to launch more bubbles from below
As active forms from this unlikely band
Of prism-managed light in cut glass show.

Between these metal plated surfaces
The inner pool takes gravity head on
Suspends the swimmer in near weightlessness
The hinted ecstasy of mass foregone.

Mishaps add interest

Marja-Leena asked if I'd got any regional snaps from our holidays. Since our aim was to devote ourselves to sensual pleasure these are rather rare. In any case I'm aware of my shortcomings with a camera and only reluctantly unship l'appareil. Hope what follows gives some idea of what we were up to.

View from restaurant just below Mont Aigoual observatory (1567 m); for all I know Kanchenjunga was visible. BB's younger daughter provides frame

Zach the juvenile mariner; his ma on Li-Lo behind

St-Guilhem-le-Désert a touristy but well restored village

Mont Ventoux in Provence, a trial for TdF racers

View from the villa's balcony - good for getting loaded to

The narrow streets of Couvertoirade, a walled village

Zach unimpressed by Grandpa BB's progress through the billows

More from the Villa Bonden:

OH WHAT A FALL Shuffling past Lodève’s hotel de ville and more than a little conscious of the seventh phase of Jacques “Ages of man” I stumbled over a bollard and fell on to my nose, the basis of my only true claim to physical beauty. The tentative attention I received from French teenagers and octogenarian concierges confirmed I’d been right about Jacques. The nose survived but my left wrist was sprained and led to my forcing my way through the rapidly closing door of a pharmacie, the time being 11.59, a minute before France’s sacred lunch break. Normally I am able to turn my physical failings in France into rewarding conversational opportunities, but the grumbling stomach of the pharmacienne prevented this. The wrist-support cost a shocking €41. Un prix énorme, I said, demanding a receipt prior to a claim on my travel insurance I know I will never make. My hungry saviour nodded.
LE STYLE C’EST L’HOMME Lodève was also the scene of a lost purse which necessitated a visit to the police commissariat (in the vain hope that someone might turn it in) and to the gendarmerie (to obtain a temporary driving licence replacing the one that had disappeared). The police were mainly overweight, sweaty and worked in a paper-strewn cavity that looked a hundred years old. The female gendarme wore a blouse with creases so sharp they could have been used as weapons.
CHARTRES Quite a different experience from those which uplifted Lucy recently. The Hotel Marmotte is located on the rue Charles Coulombs, but Chartres has another similarly named street which only lacks the final s. Satnav obediently took us to the first in the town’s traffic-crowded centre before, contritely re-programmed, taking us to the correct address in the midst of an industrial estate. Cheap, though.

Sorry, couldn't help myself

Blogs subvert Euclid: they cause intersections in what would otherwise be the parallelism of our separate lives. Relucent Reader, who frugally writes one of my must-read blogs from Mechanicsville, Virginia, recently celebrated Bloomsday, June 16, the day on which Joyce’s Ulysses unfolds. I responded. In his re-response the subjects he touched on were like a descant to my own concerns. I’m taking a one-day break from my holiday diary to re-re-respond. As Luther said: Ich kann nicht anders.

First Ulysses itself. The greatest novel ever written; alas, I am not open to negotiation on this. RR’s post confirmed that on this year’s Bloomsday I was actually re-reading the book, though being in France, I was temporarily unaware of the date. RR believes: “some passages… lend themselves to reading aloud and, at least in Boston (RR has New England connections) it was a bit of a tradition on The Day.” I shall continue re-reading with that in mind.

RR liked C. S Forester’s Hornblower novels but couldn’t get on with O’Brian (arguably a Forester evolution) from whom my blogonym is derived. He promises to “have another run”. RR is frighteningly well-read and I’d hesitate to diagnose his problem. Possibly the stumbling block is an important O’Brian theme of class differences, something many Americans refuse to take seriously.

“Never been to France, would love to some time (I should add RR gets about quite a bit), tho the Missus is less enthusiastic about the project.” Ah yes, I’ve lived in the USA and owned a house in France. How can the two be reconciled? Perhaps on the matter of friendships: Americans can be masters of the instantaneous rapport, the French tend to edge in sideways.

RR mentions Stephenson’s Kidnapped. I was using my ebook reader in France to creep up on the passage where Alan Breck takes on the ship’s crew – cited by Graham Greene as perfect action writing.

RR approves of Belgian beer and in another allusion to reading aloud (“when I had the breath”) reveals he used to do just that “to a captive audience at the juvenile detention center”.

Given the subject of my blog, I suppose I was drawn to someone writing from Mechanicsville but there is another link. RR’s initials are those of my real-life name. Go figure.

Instead of a postcard

Our holiday at the St Jean de la Blaquière villa (36 km west of Montpellier) was fraught with techno:
A PEN? Normally I cobble together poetry on the computer, something real poets disapprove of. Lacking electronics at SJDLB I resorted to pen and paper which means I have a complete record of a fortnight’s second thoughts. I now intend to live to 152, sell my MSs to a Texan university and live off the proceeds.
IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. OH YES, IT IS. The villa lav had one of those double-button flushers, one for short-term and one for… er, longer visits. Except the cistern valve wouldn’t close and the previous occupants (a rather destructive group of bikers) had turned off the water supply. Simple, I thought, as I lifted the cistern lid. To reveal a sprung cable, a two-stage cam, lots of concentric tubes and an inter-relationship I wot not of. A prayer to the Oc god, Technos, was answered positively.
NEVER TOO YOUNG. BB: “I’m just going out to check the car’s oil.” BB fille cadette: “That doesn’t interest me but there is someone who would be interested.” And so three-year-old Zach watched silently, eyes wide, as the dipstick was extracted, wiped, re-dipped and examined. Believe me, he’s way beyond fluffy toys.

LA VIE EN ROSE Huge quantities of rosé were drunk, mainly from wine boxes – Hey! We were quaffing not tasting and spitting. The economics of a 10-litre (vs. our normal 5-litre) box appeared tempting until younger daughter pointed out a significant disadvantage: it wouldn’t fit into the fridge. She’s her father’s child.

DIY: the fatal flaw is yourself

I hope no one has concluded I’m in favour of - or any good at - DIY. As Hilaire Belloc recommends, my job is to give “give employment to the artisan”. I do this willingly, enjoying the further benefit of watching an expert at work. Grist for the post.

My main failing, discussed before, is impatience. Once the tools are out of the toolbox I can’t wait for them to return. An unfinished project is a Damoclean sword; it’s ironic that, in a casual moment, I chose as blogonym the name of someone supremely efficient at DIY and everything else. But impatient DIY has other aspects.

You’re screwing in a wood screw that is getting tighter because you pre-drilled the hole with an impatiently selected and slightly-too-small drill bit. Sooner rather than later you will have to unscrew and re-drill the hole. But you fatally delay this decision for a further two turns; the effort is enormous and, in applying it, the screwdriver blade gouges the screw-head slot so that the blade no longer fits securely. Getting the damaged screw out takes an afternoon.

A piece of wood is oversize by a tiny amount. The obvious answer is to plane it. But a plane can be fiddly so you use a coarse file “because it’s quicker”. This creates a rounded edge instead of a flat rectangular one. Thus there are gaps at the junction when you mate this piece with another.

DIY, like genius, is an infinite capacity for taking pains. That I can recognise this defect in myself doesn’t mean I am any closer to resolving it.