"The Rose"

Kelli gave me this poem by Mark Strand.
It's very unusual for me to read poetry. I like how literal, word-by-word decoding has to be abandoned in favour of an intuitive leap into the unknown.

The sorrows of the rose were mounting up.
Twisted in a field of weeds, the helpless rose
felt the breeze of paradise just once, then died.
The children cried, "Oh rose, come back.
We love you, rose. "Then someone said that soon
they'd have another rose. "Come, my darlings,
down to the pond, lean over the edge and look
at yourselves looking up. Now do you see it,
its petals open, rising to the surface, turning into you?"
"Oh no," they said. "We are what we are - nothing else."

How perfect. How ancient. How past repair.

Les Signaraux revisited (yet again)

Juan arrived back from Spain on Friday, after a satisfying but draining trip. I was almost as tired, after a day of shiatsu at the MCPA, and neither of us could stay awake beyond 9pm. It raised questions about how viable our lifestyle is - we sometimes feel burned out with the non-stop planning, whether it's food supplies for Juan and his toing and froing to Switzerland, his work trips, my trips to the UK, me going to Switzerland for weekends - forever planning. This sounds feeble and spoilt-brattish.

Anyway, it's Saturday: a sunny day above Les Signaraux, a route equally suitable for rando and nordique skis, and the blissful liberty of making our own path across an almost empty landscape - and life is perfect.
This place always makes my heart sing - something about the familiarity, the scale - I know it well and feel safe in the gentle hills and valleys.

man in red

At the top the wind howled - as it usually does up there - and blasted us with stinging gusts of powder snow. But it meant that the atmosphere was blown clear of the smog that has hung low over the whole region for much of the winter. Wonderful to see in crisp detail the surrounding peaks.

man in blue

And then, coming down, we found a sheltered spot at the edge of the cross-country piste to picnic...

We then headed down, off-piste again, on difficult, icy snow - and I didn't break anything. We were way too speedy - it was all over in a couple of hours. But it meant we could enjoy the rest of the lovely sunny day in the garden. How to bottle up the memories, to last me through the ups and downs of life between blog entries...

At the end of the weekend we walked around the garden and Juan said goodbye to Vaulnaveys for 3 weeks (I will be in CH next weekend and we'll be away for the Easter weekend). Will he see the forsythia and magnolia stellata poised to flower? I think not. Choices choices...

spring? - kind of...

During February, while friends were getting spring fever, I resisted - there was unfinished ski business, and   winter is a long affair; I didn't want to be seduced into false optimism. But now we've had irises, primroses and crocuses in the garden; 19 degrees; and the birds are going ballistic. Whatever snow the gods might throw our way between now and May, spring is starting its journey from the valley upwards, and I can feel the sap rising...

 

So it was strange, this Sunday, to leave spring behind and re-enter winter, only the longer daylight hours signalling the change of season:

While Juan took a flight to Madrid and enjoyed lunch with his family in Salamanca prior to a week of meetings in Spain, I went out with the CAF ski nordique group. As we tramped up to the Grand Rocher, the topic of conversation was what supplies to take on the trek to Norway later in the month. The argument wasn't about whether cheese was suitable (complete agreement there) but whether Comté (45% fat content) was better than Beaufort (48%).

Coming down, Chantal's Level 1 outing became more of a rando event. But my newly acquired downhilling confidence gave me a feeling of indestructability as I slid down slopes that would previously have completely phased me:

I'm happy that I've made it out with the CAF at least once this season (on nordic skis hired for the whole season... hmmm).

Clare D goes skiing

We'd been planning this trip for over a year. Me feeling just a little nervous about whether Isère was going to offer Clare anything like the experience she'd had during family holidays in wilder terrain in Norway. This was half-term and the Arcelle plateau, beautiful though it is, was not a deserted wilderness. The buzz of skiers and toboganners gave it more the atmosphere of a beach than the mountains. But I needn't have worried: wonderful weather and and dramatic Alpine horizons were more than enough:

the Arcelle plateau - Clare: where are your skis?!

The following day we revisited Les Signaraux, scene of Black Friday (see blog entry "Happy to be alive"), climbing through a thick layer of fog...

Clare practising snow-ploughing 

... to emerge on the superb cross-country piste looking towards the Ecrins and Dévoluy:

That evening we feasted on Tartiflette - between us eating a whole Reblochon in a 24-hour period:

Juan had a longer than usual week and didn't join us until Saturday evening. 

The next day the three of us walked up Beauregard (our all-seasons local hill):

... Juan chivalrously lending Clare his snow shoes, and slowed down as a result...

... Clare finding bum-shuffling more effective than walking:

What with yoga sessions, a trip to the flea market, shopping at the Vaulnaveys market, and chats galore it was an action-packed and convivial weekend. Come back soon, Clare!

Happy Birthday, Juan!

The clouds finally lifted, in every sense, this weekend. Thanks to our “Swiss” friends Antje and John inviting us to use their holiday flat for a night, we had a reason to return to Aussois, in the Vanoise,  last visited with Brian Todd in summer 2011 in unimaginably different summer heat.

In summer the ski infrastructure is a blight on the landscape. In winter – well, I admit it, we had an absolute ball. Grandiose, 360-degree panoramas, with the Ecrins in the far background…

… and views across to the col we’d walked over with Brian in summer:

I may have looked longingly at the ski-tourers heading off to the back country but the isolation of some of the pistes came close to it:

The wide, empty pistes, under wall-to-wall sun, were a joy to ski down…

We managed to ski in perfect harmony for two days together, Juan’s January fall making him more cautious and therefore compatible with his increasingly speedy wife. I even managed to coax him into a couple of the mountain eateries…

Sunday was Juan’s birthday. The wife managed a cake, lit at breakfast so we could take some slices onto the piste!...

 … and Juan had something  to open, thanks to Buff and Colin. (Awesome.)

A wonderful, wonderful weekend.

deep and soft and uneven

Snow, forecast for Sunday (and inspiring Juan to leave for Yverdon mid afternoon to avoid the horrors of un-snowploughed roads), finally started to fall early Monday morning. By the time I woke up there was an impressive 20cm of wettish white stuff, the trees and shrubs bent double by the load. And it continued unabated all day.

In team with the neighbours we shovelled the carpark to allow the cars to be moved. The snow ploughs were slower than usual to arrive and even the main road remained an unstable sea of slush and ice until mid afternoon. Against all sense I decided to hold the admin rdv at the Renault garage, annoying the hell out of the motorists queuing behind me as I drove at snail's pace down to Gières. Maybe I should display "recent accident victim: bear with me, please" on my rear windscreen.

Driving back, the road was clearer. But where to put the stuff remained the issue: the road and pavement snow ploughs creating an increasingly high and narrow wall between the two.

And still it fell. During the night I relieved the boredom of insomnia by taking a snap of the view from my bedroom,  then took it again this morning. Today, unlike yesterday, the snow-clearing teams must have been out in force: the roads were clean as a whistle with just the 35cm on car roofs testifying to the volumes that have fallen. Temperatures are not especially cold so will this taste of the Arctic vanish as quickly as it arrived?

troubled waters

My blog absence over the last few weeks reflects an unhealthy mental state. What can I say that is honest?

Maybe nothing, on this occasion. Onwards and upwards.

First to Bournemouth, where my niece Poppy had her own troubles: a hall of residence clampdown on the use of microwaves severely curtailing her possibilities for self-catering; and the house-sharing configuration for next year shifting with the Bournemouth sand. (Everyone I've mentioned this to confirms that there's something about girls... though my memories of the happy band with whom I house-shared in Newcastle are all positive. Thirty-three (yow!!!) years later my friend Clare will be visiting shortly.)

Anyway, it was lovely seeing Poppy - an all-too-rare event these days. And I think she has forgiven me for the non-communication which resulted in me frogmarching us around Bournemouth while she was recovering  from shingles.

Poppy and the banned, sarong-clad microwave

From Bournemouth I linked up with students travelling to Wimbourne for Bill Palmer's PG shiatsu course. And ten spent 3 days working with the inner organs, trying (and failing) to gain support from them.

Bill demos working with the lungs

Then, at B on Avon, Mum and Dad were their usual supportive, kind, interested selves.
I had the bonus of coinciding with my nephew Ol - a temporary tenant while he works another contract for Aardman (aka Wallace & Grommit). Jaws dropped as he took us through a Shaun the Sheep video project that will be released this March. Eventually, the penny dropped and I understood that modelling doesn't mean modelling, it means modelling.

Awestruck grandparents gaze nonplussed at genius Ol's stills

  

Crash-landing back in France there is at last some news about the car. (Yes, it has taken 3 weeks.) It is repairable so I have access to a courtesy car and can cross "marooned without transport or ability to work" off my list of worries.