Travels in the South

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During my week in Provence we made a visit to the village of Les Pennes Mirabeau, in the hills just outside Marseilles. Lionel (the groom's) brother Quentin (pronounce it the French way, please!) bought a fabulous house there, a couple of months ago, and we were invited to lunch.

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The approach to the house is a narrow, winding road, climbing steeply up the hill and hairpinning round corners; soon we were between buildings on our left and a rocky cliff-face on our right, seemingly close enough to brush against as we drove. The front door to Quentin's place is directly off that road (the slightly recessed doorway in the first small photo, above left). Once inside, we found four large rooms, stacked neatly on top of each other, all joined by a beautiful red-tiled staircase. In the front, the view was just of rock, hardly more than an arm's length away, but at the back, the view was rather more far-reaching...

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We had a lovely lunch there, pizza and bread and salad and wine, enjoying the sunshine and admiring the house and sheltered from the strong winds outside.

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In the early afternoon we left to drive to the coast; Quentin took us to Redonne, a favourite place of his, where stunning pale gold and orange cliffs zig-zag down to the sea...

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That was my first sight of the Mediterranean, and I could have stood there for hours, buffetted by the wind and squinting into the glare of the sun off the water. However, all too soon we made our way back down the cliff path,

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and through the boatyard, past the little harbour,

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to walk around the edge of the inlet to the next village.

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Mum and Andy, I thought so often how you would have loved the houses...

The Sultan's Elephant

Imagine this... it's Sunday afternoon, you're in Piccadilly Circus, and it's incredibly busy. Nothing unusual, you say? no, except this time, there are no cars, and it's packed only with people, as far as the eye can see.

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You notice they're all craning in one direction... you turn and look, but you can't see anything... a child's voice calls, 'He's coming!' and you look further down Piccadilly, in the direction of Green Park.

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And there, in the distance...

...no, that's impossible. It looks like -

- no, such things simply do not happen, not in the centre of London. It looks like -

- well, it looks like an elephant.

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You hear a sound now, a throbbing, and a thumping; it's in time with the creature's movements, and now you see he's definitely getting closer. His ears are flapping slowly; his trunk is coiling and twisting, and his eyes blink, his long lashes feathering the air...

...you hear music; the thumping is louder now, it's tribal drums, and there are singing voices, and guitars; a hypnotic and infectious tune that, in other circumstances, would have you dancing. But not today, not now; there's this elephant; and he's getting closer, and your jaw is dropping in awe, and - yes - delight.

His trunk raises itself up, and water sprays over the crowd; you hear squeals and laughter and people shouting... you can see his huge legs moving; pacing deliberately as he comes nearer... the leathery ears flap, he looks around him, and keeps coming. He's closer and closer; you can see the enormous curved tusks, banded about with gold and crimson; there are rows of brass studs in his ears, and they glint in the sunlight... suddenly his mouth opens, and he bellows; trumpetingly, deafeningly. He's HUGE, the people are tiny before and around him... he moves on, and they scatter, but you hold your ground; he's impossibly close, and impossibly large; he looms above you.

There has never been anything like this. You are grinning as widely as a person can grin; the impossibility, the absurdity, the incredible beauty is almost too much to comprehend.

He stops beside you. He is near enough to touch and you look up, almost vertically, past the howdah on his back and into the sky.

His massive feet shift; he bellows again, and slowly begins to move once more. He paces around the circus, passes Eros and the Trocadero, and slowly disappears south east. The drums and music fade...

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(There's obviously more to this story, but I think you should find it out for yourselves... Hint: a Google search on my subject line will set you in the right direction ;)).

Update: click here for some amateur (but pretty well edited) footage of the event, on YouTube.

A Walk Through Aix en Provence

It's a lovely spring day, and the sun is shining... it's market day; there are people everywhere, talking and laughing and calling and buying, and this is a lovely ancient town... so let's walk a while, shall we?

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