Danish artist Bertha Wegmann

Dinner in Le Presbytere with some of Síle’s choir Cantarela. Good time had by all.

As an occasional indulgence I buy myself a glossy Brocante magazine, if only to assure myself that I am buying the right kind of antiquities. This month they do a tour of a super trendy brocanteur’s house in Spain which is divided into “zones” rather than rooms. This means that the bath is firmly placed in the dining room. Handy, I suppose, if you are serving messy food.

I’ve been crying all my life, I suppose I never really stopped from my youth when it was tolerated, into my adolescence when it was frowned on, and then through my student years when it was taboo. I remember crying at the Bolshoi version of the Dying Swan in the Gaiety in Dublin at 16, in front of mortified college friends the first time I heard Cohen’s “Hey that’s no way to say Goodbye” and again at a friends house while watching something crass with Jimmy Stewart- to the concern of the friend’s mother. (Is something the matter Martin ?)
When my children were small they used to watch “Little House on the Prairie” with one eye on the tele and the other on Dad (“He’s off again !). I don’t actually think I am altogether alone in this. Glancing around through tears at my mothers funeral I saw that my three brothers were weeping openly while my three sisters were white faced but keeping their upper lips in control.
It has to some extent been a sexist thing, not shaming for women but certainly shaming for men. I say has, because now, and quite suddenly, the rules have changed. It started with Trudeau and Obama weeping openly on live television and now! Jeez ! They are all at it. Biden last week blubbed his way through an award ceremony. Basically, for once I am ahead of the posse by crying copiously all my life.
I suppose the thing that I find most remarkable about this sea change is how the heck did these macho men manage before the amnesty ? American Presidents, English Kings- even bereaved husbands at funerals, were capable of delivering devastating words dry eyed. I could never start to imagine how they do this but never cared enough to try.

Dates for 2017’s Nature walks and cookery courses are now up on our web page :

www.lepresbytere.net/courses/

From 11 years ago, on this day.

This morning there was a frost and Sile found that the water on the top of the bucket where we had been storing the holly for Christmas had frozen, beautifully capturing in ice the berries and leaves which had fallen off and were floating on top of the water.
Pretty Cool Eh?

You know when you have a song which won’t leave your head?
My feeling is that to exorcise the song you have to sing it, or write a blog about it!

When I was about 18 or 19 I was passionate about Judy Collins, to some extent I still am but now the passion is more nostalgic.
She was a terrific chooser of songs, and it was from her I first heard Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, Sandy Denny, Incredible String Band and Joni Mitchel.
She was also a fine songwriter herself.
On one of her LPs was a song she wrote ; My Father.

This was written about a time in her youth when she had polio and it didn’t seem likely that she would ever dance.
It is one of her best songs and this is the one that has been singing in my head all morning.
This could be just the nostalgie de la vie that Christmas brings on or it could be the words, we are after all “going to live in France”.

Listen to it on youtube here
When I went looking for the words on the internet I discovered that an american artist has illustrated the words and made it into a childrens book.
That is one for my stocking!

My father always promised us
That we would live in France
We’d go boating on the Seine
And I would learn to dance

We lived in Ohio then
He worked in the mines
On his dreams like boats
We knew we would sail in time

All my sisters soon were gone
To Denver and Cheyenne
Marrying their grownup dreams
The lilacs and the man

I stayed behind the youngest still
Only danced alone
The colors of my father’s dreams
Faded without a sound

And I live in Paris now
My children dance and dream
Hearing the ways of a miner’s life
In words they’ve never seen

I sail my memories of home
Like boats across the Seine
And watch the Paris sun
As it sets in my father’s eyes again

This Christmas we have given the house a big smile !