Protests at London Met

Staff and students at London's largest university today lobbied the Governors of London Metropolitan University, who were meeting to discuss the £15m budget cut and the £38m repayment to HEFCE, the Universities' funding body, for grants to students who did not complete their courses. Rather than take action against the senior managers whose creativity with the figures landed the University in this mess, from 400 to 500 job cuts, including compulsory redundancies, are expected among academic and administrative staff, which will have a major impact on their studies for London Met's 34,000 students. Staff have called for a vote of no confidence in the Vice Chancellor, Brian Roper, one of the highest paid VCs in the country.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7857190.stm

Fair weather - The Whitechapel Gallery

There are welcome signs that work to The Whitechapel Gallery is nearing an end. The Gallery is set to reopen in April this year after a major refurbishment merging it internally with its historic neighbour, the former Whitechapel Library. A large gilded weather vane, designed by Canadian artist Rodney Graham, who exhibited at The Whitechapel himself in 2002, has already been erected above the site. Realised from his 2005 photographic study Allegory of Folly: Study for an Equestrian Monument in the form of a Wind Vane, the figure of Erasmus sits reading a thick tome astride a trotting horse, facing not its head, however, but its rump. A comment on the future of education and the current plight of the Cass School of Art just across the road?

January 2009

The Gallery and Library on the day of the London Tube bombings 07/07/2005

Flâneries - Picnic protests

French activists have found a new way to grab the headlines in protest at the decreasing purchase power of the euro in their pockets - the picnic protest. A group called L'appel et la pioche, literally The call and the pick axe, a pun on l'appel/la pelle (the spade), use text messaging to organise flash mob gatherings in targeted Paris supermarkets. They spread out a picnic in one of the aisles using goods from the supermarket's shelves and invite shoppers to join them until the police or security guards arrive. The group aim to publicise the situation of low income workers hit by the effects of the credit crunch and France's Génération Y, possibly the first group of young people in centuries who are likely to face a standard of living lower than their parents'. View it here:

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/npa/video/x6x8gb_action-lappel-et-la-pioche-npa-2709_news

Slogan: "au delà du jeu de mots, des actions concrètes..."

Notes from Cuba

Playing Castro's Tune - Steven Evans. I missed this on Radio 4 at lunchtime, but caught it later on iPlayer, 'making the unmissable, unmissable' (and the missable too):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00gkz7q/Music_Feature_Playing_Castros_Tune_Episode_2/

The programme set out to convince listeners that the evolution of Cuban music has stalled as a result of State support and its popularity with tourists. Although it's one of the island's most successful exports and attractions, Evans is unimpressed, maintaining that State sponsored music and art academies don't produce progressive, contemporary work. He contends that when the 'Special Period' came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba made a 'pact with the devil' in embracing tourism as its main source of income, producing 'nostalgic music that toes the line', at least in the view of those who see Cuban musicians as Government employees charming Canadian dollars, euros and pounds from tourists nostalgic for the 'nice old music' of the 'nice old boys' in the Buena Vista Social Club. While it's admirable that musicians can be a superstars at 80 or 90, Evans hears a dead music, celebrated only by tourists who 'romanticise poverty and a regime that they wouldn't dream of living in themselves', drip-feeding them the 'Buena Vista Social Club on a loop'.

As one of the drip-fed tourists, I loved the good old boys and their good old music. How uplifting to see the elderly taking centre stage, energetic, spirited, making an invaluable contribution to the economy of their country, not hidden away or invisible, neither state burden, nor shameful duty. The exchange is made eyes wide open: we want it, they give it; they want it, we give it - musicians and the cigar-smoking relics practising as photo opportunities on every corner. Would you expect cutting edge performance art in Covent Garden Piazza from the street entertainers? Or avant garde music from the buskers at Leicester Square Tube Station? Are the male voice choirs of Evans' native Wales breaking new boundaries? Chill out. Smile. Enjoy the spectacle. You were paid to go out there!

Cuba - 50 years on

It's fifty years since the end of the Cuban Revolution when Castro's rebels descended from the Sierra Maestra mountains to the city of his birth, Santiago de Cuba. News reports describe the celebrations as low key, following the devastating hurricanes of last summer and Fidel Castro's continued absence from public view. But change is in the air.

Revolutionary slogans still take the place of advertising billboards, but for how much longer will Cuba be able to retain its unique identity and hold off the inevitable tide of consumerism once the US embargo is lifted? The first three pictures show hoardings at the Bay of Pigs, site of the US invasion in 1961 when the world was on the brink of nuclear war.

The group of photos below were taken in Cienfuegos, named after one of Castro's revolutionary commanders, where the reification of Che was much in evidence.

Flâneries - Franco-Gallic empathies

Growing up in a small Welsh mining village in the 1950s, my first experience of the French, long before I started to study the language or ventured outside Wales, was of the Siôni Winwns (Johnny Onions), or Breton onion sellers, who regularly cycled round our housing estate with their bicycles laden with strings of onions, a tradition that had begun in the early ninteenth century and that only died out in the 1970s. At the time their periodic appearance was alien, Other, yet also completely unremarkable.

http://cy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sioni_Winwns
http://www.gtj.org.uk/cy/rhyfel-a-gwrthryfel/pobl/sioni-winwns/
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/589505

From my earliest language classes the links between French and Welsh became evident despite the historic division between the two forms of Celtic - Continental (on the European mainland) and Insular (in the British Isles). For example 'pont' is bridge in both French and Welsh. It's even said that it is easier for a Welsh speaker to learn Breton than for a French speaker to do so. 'Llyfr' is book in Welsh, while its equivalent is 'levr' in Breton and 'livre' in French; likewise, the days of the week, the colours and numbers are strikingly similar in Breton and Welsh, some also in French. One of my favourite French verbs, essential for shopping in the souks of French-speaking North Africa, or 'le Mahgreb', is 'baraguiner'. In French it means to barter or bargain and its derivation is testament to the close relationship between Wales and Brittany; since 'bara' is Welsh for 'bread' and 'gwin' is 'wine'. Its etymology derives from the practice of travelling merchants bartering or exchanging goods for sustenance.

http://www.llandysul-plogoneg.com/breton-gallois_an.htm

Today, I belatedly discovered that the French celebration of La Fête des Rois on Twelfth Night, 6th January, was once celebrated in Wales too, but before my time. In France a flat, sweet cake with a layer of marzipan cream, called a 'galette' or 'galette des rois' is served. It's baked with a 'fève' or dried bean inside and the person who discovers it in their slice is king (or queen) for the duration and can order the rest of the company to do their bidding. If you buy one, the patissier gives a gold cardboard crown for the finder to wear. I found this a charmingly quaint and uniquely French ritual when I first experienced it, but today in my dilapidated 'Taste of Wales' cookbook, I found Theodora Gibbon's recipe for Teisen Galan Ystwyll, or Twelfth Night cake, which she describes as being baked to celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, claiming that it was formerly the occasion in Wales for more feasting and merriment than Christmas. The 'teisen' also had a dried bean hidden in it and its finder was named King or Queen of Misrule.

This is a recipe for a Galette des Rois Frangipane:
Ingredients

2 packets of puff pastry
3 eggs
100g sugar
100g ground almonds
1 tablespoon of plain flour
70g of softened butter
1 tablespoon of rum (or kirsch)
1 tablespoon of milk
1 dried bean

Method

Heat the oven to 200°C.

To prepare the marzipan, beat together the eggs, ground almonds, butter and sugar. Mix in the flour and alcohol.

Roll out one packet of puff pastry into a circular shape, spread the marzipan over and place the bean.

Roll out the second packet of puff pastry to a similar shape and size and cover the galette. Damp the edges with a little water or egg white and seal the pastry layers.

Brush the top of the galette with a little milk.

Cook for 20 to 25 minutes and serve warm or cold.

I'm going to try the recipe tomorrow and will add a photo of my own efforts. The one above is from my 1966 edition of the Tante Marie cookbook. Here is mine (camera phone only still available):

Flâneries - Pardon My French

One of my reasons for starting this blog was to post from time to time small, inconsequential items about French, the French and France that might be of interest to students on the intensive French Extension course for future language teachers whose e-learning element I deliver each summer. This will be the first flânerie of many, I hope. The word suggests an idle, dawdling stroll - so here, like the blog itself, it denotes a rather purposeless, haphazard topic.

http://www.wordreference.com/fren/flâner

Its other virtue is that Baudelaire, my favourite poet, was the originator of the concept of the flâneur, a fin-de-siècle metropolitan dandy who, filled with ennui, listlessly wandered through the arcades of late ninteenth century Paris. The concept has been appropriated into Postmodern aesthetics through the writing of Baudelaire's commentator, Walter Benjamin. My use of it is also intended to be an ironic reference to contemporary critical art practice.

Baudelaire's grave in Montparnasse cemetery, visited November 2008

I've recently read two very different books on the French language aimed at an English speaking readership and would recommend one to all lovers of the language however adept or inept their mastery (mistressy?) of it is.

Pardon My French by Charles Simoney is a delighfully funny and self-deprecating guide to the pitfalls and potential faux pas of speaking French to the French, of which The Guardian columnist Simon Hoggart wrote, "If you use the words and phrases here, you'll be so convincing, French people will talk very fast to you." Even Parisians, perhaps? Praise indeed. It's invidious to single out one entry, but it will serve as an appetiser. In the section called How to sound French, Timoney, who has a French wife and now lives and works in France, lists the false friend 'photographe' and writes:

"This is one of the dirtier tricks that the French language comes up with to upset foreigners. If you were faced with the term 'un photographe', what would you think it meant? I imagine that you would assume, like I did, that it was French for a photo. But no! It is French for a photographer. If you say, as I once did, 'Il ya beaucoup de photographes dans mon album,' people will be most surprised and wonder how on earth you manage to carry it around. The correct word for photo is 'une photographie'. This is generally shortened to 'une photo'. There is another common word for photo which also causes confusion among foreigners - 'un cliché'. If someone offers to show you their 'clichés', I don't know what you might imagine but it probably wouldn't be holiday snaps."
http://www.booksonfrance.com/books/246678/Charles-Timoney/Pardon-My-French:-Unleash-Your-Inner-Gaul/

French for Le Snob by Yvette Reche, on the other hand, is little more than a directory of dull dictionary entries. Although, or perhaps because, Reche was born and educated in France and now lives in Canada, her lexicon is dry and humourless. The aspirations suggested by the title are assumed to be ironic, but on closer reading are found to pander to stereotypes of the Basil Fawltyesque English speaker acquiring foreign language skills only to impress fellow English speakers and not to converse with native French speakers. One example is enough to give a flavour of her style. In a sub section of the chapter on Architecture, headed Be a Snob, Reche writes with no apparent irony:

"Francophiles, snobs, or anyone who wants to be different and sophisticated can use any of the French phrases listed below."

She goes on to suggest that her misguided readers should interject into their (English) conversation ; "She has la bague au doigt. She is married" and "He is a gros bonnet; he is a very important person" among other phrases. Try it in company if you are foohardy enough and note the reaction.

Too large to hold comfortably, too self-satisfied and didactic to enjoy, this is one for recycling to my local charity shop.

http://www.paris-expat.com/guide/08-05_reche.html

Toothache and Bacon

With no camera or camcorder to document my visit to Tate Britain to catch the final days of the 2008 Christmas tree, and the Francis Bacon and Turner Prize shows, I had to make do with my new Samsung mobile phone, which turns out to be as good as the early digital cameras, if not better. It's 5 megapixels, while my first digital Canon Ixus, which refused to recharge for the occasion in protest at my long neglect, was only 2.1.

The lack of a camera, an essential tool for venturing out in my cloak of invisibility (age), and a throbbing toothache almost dissuaded me from going, but Bob and Roberta Smith's recycled and cycled tree, Make your own Christmas, above, alone made the effort and pain worthwhile. Bob and Roberta S, aka PB, is a colleague in the art, media and design department where I work, noted for his idiosyncratic hats and brightly coloured dress. The tree was fun and original, as well as catching the spirit of this particular festive season where home-made and home-grown gifts have returned to favour in response to the global credit crunch. I helped knit a scarf, gave bunches of herbs from my garden, made my own cards and gift tags, and created photo books online as my contribution to the war effort. View a video interview with the artists at:

http://www.tate.org.uk/tateshots/episode.jsp?item=17358

No photography allowed in the exhibitions - why are European galleries so much more relaxed about this than here? It's not as if holding up a mobile phone equates with setting up a tripod and professional large format camera for commercial gain. The Bacon show was absolutely engrossing. The gallery contextualisation was useful and not too didactic and irritating (unlike the Turner Prize wall texts). I was most moved by the thin paint, bare canvas and frantic graphic scribblings of his early paintings, especially Figure in a Landscape of 1945, which was the first of his works that I really came to know well back in the 80s. Apparently, according to the catalogue, Lyotard classed Bacon's painting as "figural", which perfectly describes the fugitive presences in his frames. Most unexpectedly engrossing was the room devoted to his sources; materials from his Reece Mews studio. I hadn't realised how often he referred to Eadward Muybridge's photographs of animal and human locomotion, which have fascinated me since I was an art student. Meanwhile, my cheek over the infected molar had swollen so much that I increasingly resembled a jowly Francis Bacon myself.

The Turner Prize show was a huge disappointment, more like a first year undergraduate studio crit' than cutting edge contemporary art. Derivative. Tired. Boring. Empty concepts with no craft or originality. And not just because my toothache made me grouchy. The work was completely upstaged by the comments board at the exit. Citizen review - nul points.