Boats and poetry in Lorient, Brittany

There are a lot of boats in the Gulf of Morbihan on the south Brittany coast. This was in the Port de Plaisance in Lorient where I spent a long weekend. It was a poetry gig, a twin town affair between Galway and Lorient, and I definitely pulled the long straw. This photo was taken on Friday when it was overcast but 18 degrees, and things only got better. You could sit outside, watch people walk past while you drank your coffee or glass of Belgian beer, wearing sunglasses and with short sleeves.

I arrived on Thursday with Mary and Susan, the two other Galway poets (yes I know I live in Clare, but the boundaries of the city have stretched to include those who spend poem time there). Friday was busy starting with a tour of the amazing Médiathèque. This is far more than une bibliothèque, a library (don't worry - I'll get over myself soon and stop dropping in French words). You can watch films here from deeply comfortable chairs, borrow from a huge range of CDs and DVDs, consult the Internet, sit in settees in the quiet space or use a closed-off room for meetings. This is the area we were in for a two-hour session checking our poem translations with Patrick, the poet, and Nadia, his english-speaking wife. It's hard work, and I wasn't even the one doing the translations. You really understand the difference between languages, and how some things just don't translate. In the evening Patrick led a bilingual poetry workshop - well attended with eleven of us working away. It was a great success.


Another thing that doesn't necessarily translate is your order for coffee. Cappuccino came with a huge quiff of whirled cream on top. Crêpes do translate but in a most superior way. There are the wheat-flour ones, which I can't eat, and the gallettes made from buckwheat, which I can. They tip over the edge of the plate and come with various fillings. The complète has egg, ham and cheese tucked into an envelope of gallette that fits on the plate, or spread across an open gallette to spill over the sides with a salad dropped into the corner. That's the one in the picture below. There are what look like oversized tea cups on the table for the cider that is traditionally drunk with the crêpes.

Saturday was poetry reading day. Hmm. Not quite such a success. The weather, you see. It was glorious and who wants to come to a reading in a dark auditorium, even if it is in the wonder of the médiathèque. So not quite such a big audience as we'd hoped. But those who were there were very enthusiastic.



On Sunday we had a visit to megalithic tombs after a traditional Breton lunch provided by Vivianne and Agnès, long-time members of the twinning committee. We were out in the countryside in a traditional farmhouse. A bit of work going on at the moment:

All the vegetables were from the garden including seven or eight varieties of tomato which tasted nothing like anything you'd buy in a shop, even a good shop selling fresh local produce. The cider, the other tradition in the area, was home made.

There were two sites we visited. Locmariaquer has the most complete Neolithic remains. There is the broken Great Menhir (read fallen phallus):

There is also the Er Grah tumulus and the Table des Marchands cairn. Inside the cairn is a chamber with engravings. Here we all are (bar the photographer):

It was just after this that we made a cloud disappear. It took some concentration but we managed it. Pouf! Three minutes of drawing its energy with our eyes according to instruction from Pascal and it was gone. Amazing!


Trinité-sur-Mer was the next stop. I thought there were a lot of boats in Lorient but look at this:

 You'd need a wide-angle lens to fit them all in. And this was looking only in one direction. There were round-the-world catamarans too:

And, my favourites, the old fishing boats:

On the way back from Trinité we drove past the many 'alignments' in Carnac. We hadn't time to stop but they were easily viewed from the road. These are extraordinary: lines of standing stones spreading over many acres.


There was an interesting thing going on with the language. It's years and years since I spent time in France and my french is very rusty. At first I was struggling in spite of working at improving my vocabulary over the last few weeks. It was all a blur. But by Saturday I was doing much better, and on Sunday it was as though a babel fish had been popped into my ear. Not all the time. It took concentration, and I needed to be in on the start of what was being said. Several people having a conversation was tricky. But I was 'zoning in' for twenty minutes at a time. It reminded me of when I first moved to this part of Clare and used to go to a local bar where the farmers drank. It's an accent that people in Scarriff down the road can struggle with. After a while, though, the words separated out and everything was clear. I'd got my ear in.

So now I'm in love with Lorient and its people. I have to keep up with the French. And Joe wants to learn for when he retires (!) and we take off in the van for a couple of months of winter warmth. Let's hope all these good intentions last.


 

Trying to catch the shot

Fieldfare

The haggard is full of blackbirds busy at the apples. Whenever you go out there they cluck hysterically, judgementally. How dare you disturb their feast. There are fieldfares too. I was glad to see them back, right on time. End of November every year they appear, winter visitors from Scandinavia. I've seen three so far in the garden, but up the track this morning towards Jones's eighteen or twenty flew over. I was out with the camera just now, trying to catch a photo, but there was silence. Not a one. I'll have to try earlier - there was a good crowd feasting this morning.

Then I was trying to capture a coal tit on the seed feeder, also in the haggard. Here's the result of that one:

 Then I went for the easy option. The bird table outside the kitchen door. Only not so easy. The buggers all disappeared of course, and it's freezing cold today, so no fun sitting there with the half door open. But eventually the great tits, blue tits and goldfinches reappeared. Busy times at the table.

I have such admiration for wildlife photographers who sit for hours in freezing and wet conditions to get the shot they want. I haven't the patience for that at all. I can probably manage ten minutes. Maybe twenty when the weather's good.

Goldfinches

I seem to be on the road to Galway a lot at the moment. I was asked to read poetry at a fundraiser for the Galway Rape Crisis Centre tonight - much to my amazement. It's at the Crane Bar and should be a good night - not because of me, I might add. It's a night of entertainment by women artists of various hues - official name An Evening Celebrating Women in Action. I find I'm getting a little nervous, but nowhere near as terrified as I would be if I were playing flute - which they also asked me to do. I suffer from the most appalling stage fright with the music if playing solo. It's deeply annoying and is self-fulfilling. I'm nervous I'll make a mistake, and because I'm nervous I'll make a mistake I make a mistake. So I'm nervous I'll make a mistake. Ho hum.

Poetry and the Royal Canal

Camper van

My updates are behind. We were away this weekend, so no internet access since last week. Joe had been away visiting his mother, so it was up to me to pack up the van for the jaunt to Galway and then to the opening of the Royal Canal. All this being away on Joe's part was not good as he'd put the van up for sale on Monday. Just to see, he said. We thought we might upgrade to a van that didn't require you to shift seat backs and make up the beds every night - we have ideas of going abroad. So the phone had been ringing with people wanting to view the van and no Joe. No point me showing it - I'd sell it to them for 10 shillings.


Off we went to Galway with Joe and van packed and me feeling nervous about the poetry reading I was about to do and trying not to think about the fact that the Over the Edge Writer of the Year comp results were to be announced afterwards. I'd been shortlisted but wished I didn't have to be there. The reading was ok I think. I didn't stumble or trip up anyway, and it was lovely to have the opportunity to read ten poems to such an audience - very supportive and keen to listen. After the readings and before the open mic competition judge James Martyn was called up to give the results. And, well, I won the poetry section with a poem called 'Pandora's Well'. Astonished and delighted.

The old mill at Clondra

Needless to say my head wasn't great the next morning, but off we went to Clondra in Co Longford. This is a tiny village surrounded by water - three rivers and the Royal Canal. It's fifty years since boats could pass from the Royal Canal onto the Shannon. The canal was closed in 1961 when the railways and roads took commercial traffic off the waterways. Low bridges and culverts were built making it impossible for boats to navigate its length, but at least it was never filled in. In 1974 the Royal Canal Amenity Group was formed to try to restore the canal. Their job is finally done.

Richmond Harbour during the opening

We weren't in Richmond Harbour for the official opening and the speeches. Instead we were crewing for a friend on her old Dutch barge - she was on her own with a baby. It was very windy but gorgeously sunny and I got to take the helm while she did child duties. I've never steered a boat of that size before - the barge is huge. 60 odd feet. Just fits into the canal locks. It has a tiller too, as it's a sailing barge. The wind and current were pushing it sideways so you had to lean all your weight on the tiller to keep us travelling in a straight line. Fabulous trip. Well, until we got to the two locks leading into Richmond Harbour and the entrance to the Royal Canal. Guess who was left holding the baby? Though she is a complete dote and extremely well-behaved. Adorable actually.

I was on a lucky streak. That night there was a jazz band in the Richmond Inn in celebration of the occasion. They were excellent. All dressed up in boaters and so on. Two of them were, I'm sure, in their seventies. There was a raffle too and we came second - the last time I got a raffle prize I think I was about eight. The second prize was better than the first - an €80 voucher for the Purple Onion restaurant in Tarmonbarry just down the road. We'd looked in there once before and decided it was a bit pricey. We had dinner there on Saturday night - it's a pub and art gallery. Great food, great ambience, great service. And not at all coloured by the fact that we only had to pay €11.

Festival and other delusions

I thought we were going to have a great weekend of diddley eye and sailing. On Friday evening we set off in the van for Mountshannon and the inaugural Mountshannon Trad Festival. Dinner first in the fabulous Snug, then off to the hotel. The last session we'd been to there was lovely but this time I was stuck behind a wall of banjos. The first two were fine (and one of them was Joe, so finer than fine) but then another arrived and that was that. Impossible to hear anything but banjo.

There are some instruments you might prefer fewer of rather than more. The bodhran is probably the most complained about. One bodhran can destroy a session if played by someone with no sense of rhythm ('I've no sense of rhythm. Think I'll take up a drum!') and even less sense of courtesy. Two or three bodhrans played with more enthusiasm than ability and you feel like leaving. Some people do. In Pepper's bar in Feakle Gary Pepper always put up a sign during the festival saying 'Only one bodhran per session'. Some people took offence.

The compost heap with mined section

When we got back to the van that night it was cold from the north wind that had been blowing all day. The forecast was for no wind the following day (typical). We only had summer duvets. And we felt like going home. So we did. It became a gardening weekend instead of a sailing and music weekend. Which is A Good Thing. This is my chance to feel that I'm on top of things - a delusion but an important delusion for the gardener.

Why I'm a deluded gardener. I weeded this last week.

Today I was out there again. I found a rich seam of compost in the heap in the corner of the haggard. This is one of those heaps where everything gets thrown. Bits of tree, docks with  roots that would survive a journey to hell and back, weeds loaded with millions of seeds. But this compost has been rotting away for years and it's fabulous. I went mining.

But rosehips like this make me happy.

I'm supposed to tell everyone about the poetry reading in Galway City Library on Thursday evening  at 6.30 because I'm in it. I find it very embarrassing doing so. But in the name of shameless self-promotion (and the comforting knowledge that nobody reads this blog anyway) here we go:

Cúirt and Robin Robertson

Back to Galway yesterday for more Cúirt readings. First we went to hear Ian Jack, past editor of Granta and present columnist in The Guardian, being interviewed by Fintan O'Toole. It's always a treat to hear two articulate people putting the world to rights. My attempts at same are always fumbles with no facts or figures at my fingertips and an inability to find the right word until ten minutes too late.

In the evening I went to hear Robin Robertson and Michael Longley. It was Robertson who I'd initially bought tickets for, as Longley wasn't brought in until later to replace the unwell Charles Simic. I ordered Robertson's The Wrecking Light a couple of months ago after an excellent review in The Guardian and was astonished and thrilled by it. Beautiful language and a dark humour make his poems exhilarating. His reading didn't disappoint. I bought his last but one book Swithering and had it signed. I'm always pathetically embarrassed about getting books signed, and didn't ask him to put 'to Nicki' as it seems so false when the author has no idea who you are. This, though, is my own hang up. A fear, I suppose, of being found wanting in some way, or needy.