Villefranche

 

We've done it. We've completed the Cote d'Azur!

Okay, that's a joke, there are a lot of towns around here, and so many things to see. But we have been to a lot of places now, having lived here for ten months. And I think we had a loose list of places we might like to check out sometime; Eze and Antibes and Monaco, and the mountain towns, and Ventimiglia, and St. Paul de Vence, and Cannes, and the mall on the beach and so on and on and on.

And of course, Villefranche Sur Mer.

But of all of them, Villefranche Sur Mer was by far the easiest one to get to. Though dating back to Medieval times it is so close to our city here that it is practically a surburb. Albeit a very pretty ancient old town suburb on its own cove with a deep water port.

We can practically walk there.

In fact, we almost did, heading out past our port area one day in the early Spring until we realized you have to walk on the road for awhile more, and we didn't want to.

But still, it's just a handful of miles away, so why bother going. I mean, sometimes when something is easy enough you just kind of keep it at hand.

But even though it's not like we're constantly running out on day adventures, we do occasionally bestir ourselves, and over the course of ten months, in the way of things, we ended up going everywhere we'd thought about going.

Except Villefranche Sur Mer.

I mean, it's so close! We can do that one anytime.

Which turned out to be true, eventually.

Maybe you've noticed this too:

A lot of things that are completely untrue suddenly manage to become true. Or, almost everything that is true starts out as something that isn't true.

So this morning, on a hot Sunday, after Argentina and England qualified to play each other in the semifinal of The World Cup, we got up super early (like, before nine!) and caught the train to Villefranche Sur Mer (at ten).

The train is very close to us and runs pretty often. It was crowded with all the people heading up the coast towards Italy with all those vacationy points inbetween. But we only had to go two stops, one of which is still in our city. And the trip barely felt like we went anywhere at all.

We had a nice time walking around Villefranche Sur Mer and saying how we'd like to live there until we understood we do that everywhere and wouldn't really like to live there. We had a coffee in some shade. We explored the secret undercity of Villefranche. We were hot.

Then we came home. It was early afternoon. It was a nice trip.

Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime.

Here are pictures. It was too hot, so I added water to all of them. I apologize if that confuses your understanding of the place.

Why would we leave?

 

We're still planning on moving from this city to another city in France a few hundred miles away. As we originally ran into a terrible time for apartment hunting we're now waiting until late in the Summer season to resume our search. In the meantime, here we are.

Do we hate it here?

Omg no!

For instance, after a long day of paperwork we wandered out to the old town of the city. It was crammed with people, mostly from other places all over the world, and they were as fascinating as ever. We sat in maybe the old town's prettiest square, in front of maybe its prettiest church. We had a spritz and a prosecco, a buckwheat crepe with lemon and sugar, and panisse frites. We watched everything going by, and we talked.

Above us, on the square, was an apartment that was advertised when we were looking for an apartment here, way back when. We tried to move there, but like most listed places, they weren't interested in us as tenants, what with our lack of French history and foreign status. Pleasantly (though very mildly) drunk, I got a bit wistful looking up at the fascinating 300 year old apartments there.

"I can't imagnine wanting to leave had we lived up there." I said in a moment of glow. The evening had turned mild. Some Brazilians set up to make some music and do backflips or something for tips. 

The church next to us had a big plaque commemorating the local dead of WWI. There were about 40 names which didn't seem like that many. Maybe it seemed like a lot to the guy chiseling the names into that stone? Maybe it seemed like a lot to someone who knew most of them.

Probably.

We walked down through the dinner hour to the beach. Old town seemed impossibly full of tables of people dining. Some of those pizzas looked really good.

We walked home along the beach. What a lovely night!

Ask me again.

Do we hate it here?

Weirdly, for no good reason, and definitely very rarely, but,

Sure, why not?

Clouds in the South of France

 

I have been so taken in the past by various clouds here along the Mediterranean in the South of France that I've just started pointing my camera at the sky and shooting:

click click click click. 

Et voila! I'm done. 

Oh no! They moved and they're even better now! 

click click click click click click!

click click click click click click!

And there it is!

Oh, but now look at it!

click click click click click.

I will never ever miss film rolls in film cameras. I was never rich enough for it.

Nevertheless this is not the easiest way to get a good picture. 

Many months ago, in Theoule Sur Mer, I tried converting my images into something akin to Monet paintings, but the loss of reality was too much for the delicate French reality of the skies. Today, from our kitchen window and out over the hills above a hotel built for Queen Victoria to winter in, on a hot, not particularly clear day, there were the kind of astonishing clouds that had me at it again with my camera.

The same thing happened really, the clouds kept changing and getting better or stranger, the pictures seemed grand when I looked at them one way, and then they looked like I took some pictures of clouds when I looked at them another way.

Which, fairly speaking, is what they were.

But I think I've got a better editing routine this time.

And I like this little series, though your mileage may vary.

I do want to say though that I don't think the clouds here on the Cote d'Azur are better. Yes, there are some things that are better here, absolutely. But clouds? 

One of my favorite things about clouds as they seem to be able to pull it off anyhwere.

Fortunately that still includes here...

French culture

 

I think I have spotted an element of French culture. And I'll admit that I have may have had help on this from a YouTuber who does little skits where she plays both a English Woman and a French Woman. They are very funny. 

What I have discovered is that the French enjoy gossip!

This is brilliant for me as I am quite fond of gossip as well, and I think it would be nice to have more things in common with the French, like a love of cheese, and apertifs, and cafes, and old architecture, and complaining, and cheese, and, eventually, speaking French.

Hypothetically. Theoretically.

The thing that threw me off concerning the French enjoying gossip is that they are rather private. Unlike me, for instance, they are quite dignified and disinclined to freely share personal details and experiences. But yesterday we were at a Fed Ex drop off site involved in sending insanely expensive and pointless paperwork that is also now essential to my healthcare coverage here. While we were conducting this rather elaborate business with a typically reserved but pleasant enough French Woman, I noticed two giant towers of boxes sitting around waiting to be shipped. These were all packed in banana boxes. So I said (in English I confess) "That seems like an expensive way to ship bananas!"

I got a small laugh or two, which was nice.

Then after a little while the counter person said "Those are from an Austrian woman who is shipping all of that because she is leaving and moving back home."

This wasn't the first time something like that had happened, but it was the first time I realized:

Oh, the French don't like to talk personally about themselves, but they absolutely love to talk about everyone else!

In tribute

 

Yesterday I meant to post this as a sort of tribute, but my introduction to it turned into an elegy that instead I let stand on its own.

But it started from watching a bit of Messi magic, and thinking curiously that it would be nice to post the oldest Messi discussion from clerkmanifesto that I could find. And though my wee essay was a little bit more about me, and about clerkmanifesto, than it was about Messi (though it was about us both), I thought it would be nice to share it nevertheless. 

It is more than ten years old, and though it feels like it might not be my very oldest about Messi, it marked the point where I created a subject tag for him, which was perhaps my way of getting serious.

In as much as I get serious.

Which is only kinda.

This is from March of 2016 and was called:

Mellow like Messi

"Just" You ask "What kind of Library Clerk are you?"

"What's that?" I reply. "Have you read my blog clerkmanifesto? Roughly ten percent of my posts are all about what kind of library clerk am I. Twelve hundred posts, ten percent, so that's 120 essays on the sort of Library Clerk I am."

"Yes, I've read them." You say. "What fun! Tell me again please?"

"Okay."




The greatest soccer player who ever lived is Lionel Messi. The teen librarian Marcus, who among the one billion fervent soccer fans in the World is the only one I actually know, might say "How can you really say who is the greatest player of all time?"

To which I might reply "Like this: Messi is the greatest player of all time." But only because, well, sometimes I can get a little like that, which you might have noticed.

And here's how the great Messi plays soccer: 

Economically.

There he is, jogging easily up the side. There he is, studying the game, pacing himself, laying back, only doing just what is needed, a spectator, enjoying the Spanish sun, quietly stalking the game, resting up.

And then he is needed. He is called on. He is essential, and he rises up fluidly from a kind of snooze mode to perform absolute miracles and magic. Practice, training, time on the pitch, and two full games every week, but as for pure, heart stopping soccer, greatest of all time soccer, we get about 15 minutes of it every week.

That's just exactly how I clerk!

I hope that doesn't sound self-aggrandizing. If you think about it at all you will likely come to the shrewd conclusion that it isn't, really, self-aggrandizing at all. After all, clerking is not soccer.

"So," You wonder. "Is that how you write clerkmanifesto as well?"

Oh no. For that I run flat out until I collapse, panting and vomiting in the grass.

Messi near the end

 

It's an old feeling, and one that always made the joy of Messi so special. I can remember many times over the years of watching Messi, thinking, well, maybe not today. Maybe this isn't his day. And then from out of nowhere he would kick a goal in from 175 yards away while being sat on by 14 players from the other team.

That may be an exaggeration, but I hope you'll take my point.

And back then, say ten years ago, I would sort of know in the back of my mind that he would do something magical or amazing even if it was hard to see it happening. It was too much the way it always went in those days. And those little glimmers of lightning infested rainbows flicking off him out of the corner of your eye were... suggestive.

But now he is 39 years old. And, watching it all not working, it really is easier to believe it is over. 

This time, really, surely, it is over. And so it is easier to believe this is the last time because on can look at him and say: he is slower, he is older, he is not the same. 

Because he is older, and slower, and not the same, mostly.

And one day the day will come. It has to. It may even be in the quarter finals, the next game, or the one after, or the one after that, that day where the kicks go wrong, the dribble fails, and the game just... ends. And the magic takes its last sleep.

But it hasn't happened yet.

We got just one more again, one more moment, after a thousand just one mores.

It was fun.

Bringing things into focus

 

Trying to bring things into focus here in our life in France is hard. I think everytime we start to get a rhythm or maybe a sense of what a regular life might be like here and how to manage it in the best way, there's some accident, illness, change of heart, or slew of immigrant paperwork to deal with. The last of these, having to do with an application for the French health system, is currently rearing its head, and I am neither stalwart or zen in the face of these complicated paperwork and bureaucratic issues. I'm bitter and eeyorish.

Plus I have soccer to watch!

But neither of these are our subject for today. This morning I was missing my zoom camera with which I used to like to take wildlife photography and nature images. But I did replace that camera with a pretty good phone camera that has a powerful zoom that I don't often fully take advantage of, probably because I am not much in the wilds here. Also, this phone camera needs a bit of AI help to get its zoom fully up to speed, not that I too much object to AI photography, as you probably know.

But today I was looking out our window as I often do, over the tiled rooftops and out to the hills ringing the city. There is a ton of interesting stuff out there! But it can be hard to see. So I decided to pull out my phone, pick a likely spot, and see what I could find out about one of these distant, history rich hilltops.

Here then are my results: