Six Degrees of Separation - Like Water for Hot Chocolate

Last weekend, I was clearing out the shed where I store boxes of books acquired nearly 20 years ago. There were a few reading memories there, I can tell you. On the shelves, I found my copy of Like Water for Hot Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. I remember buying it on a lunchtime walk to Paperchain Bookstore in Manuka. In those days, a friend and I often spent our lunch hours walking to the bookshop, browsing the shelves, and inevitably carrying something new back to the office. Like Water for Hot Chocolate is this month's choice for 6 Degrees of Separation. 

You might already know that Annabel Smith and Emma Chapman began the 6 Degrees of Separation meme in 2014 and now it is managed (is that the right word?) by Kate at Books are my favourite and best. The idea is that Kate nominates a book and, on the first Saturday of the month, participants reveal chains of six books that all connect in some way. If you are curious to see where other people's reading leads them, Kate's blog is a good place to begin. But I owe my introduction to Whispering Gums, another very good place to start.

So where will Like Water for Hot Chocolate lead? There are a few paths we could take to begin - Chocolat by Joanne Harris; perhaps to Isabel Allende who I also discovered at Paperchain. But as Like Water for Hot Chocolate is 'a novel in monthly instalments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies', it has made me think of another book about cooking - Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. Do you remember it? Blogger Julie spends a year recreating the 524 recipes Julia Child included in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Still on the cooking in fiction theme, my next book is a novel, The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones. It also includes recipes but these were secondary to the story of a widowed American food writer who travels to Beijing to unravel her husband's past and her own present. 

The Taste of Memory leaps to mind. Marion Halligan's memoir about food and families and life is one of the few books with recipes I've read where I did attempt one of her recipes. For a little while there, I made her pizza dough - until Jim broke a tooth biting into it. Let's blame the cook, not the recipe. It's still one of my favourite books about life in Canberra and also in France.

Food is very much on my mind because now I'm thinking about the series of archaeological detective fiction created by LJM Owens, another Canberra writer. In the first book in the series, Olmec Obitutary, librarian and super sleuth Dr Elizabeth Pimms is adjusting to life in Canberra, only to be distracted by the mystery of a royal Olmec cemetery. 

Suddenly I'm not thinking about food at all. Now I'm onto graveyards. Specifically Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry, which is set in London's Highgate Cemetery. I wanted to love this book as much as I loved her first novel, The Time Traveller's Wife. I didn't, but Highgate Cemetery was a very impressive character.

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, on the other hand, will stay with me forever. I discovered Gaiman relatively recently (I know, the rest of the world fell in love with him years ago). I adore that moment of discovery. The Graveyard Book tells the story of Bod Owens, who is adopted by the supernatural inhabitants of a graveyard after his parents are murdered. I seem to recall food playing an important part in the story too. Bod's adopted family have no need of food - unlike Bod himself.

We haven't travelled very far today, have we? We began with recipes and magic in Mexico and we've ended with food and fantasy in England, with short visits to New York, France, China, Canberra, France, Canberra, and Mexico in between. 

Next month, it's back to the 80s with Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero. 

PS Thank you to those who have commented on previous posts. Being a 'comments novice', I've only just discovered them lurking, waiting to be published! Will try to get myself organised so it doesn't happen again. It was great to hear from you.

Magic Roundabouts

Yesterday, before the rain came, we wandered in Civic, hoping to spend Miles' pocket-money. It's been a while since I walked through Garema Place or down City Walk and things have changed. Including the merry-go-round.

Canberra's carousel has been on City Walk since 1974, although it dates back to an earlier time, first appearing on St Kilda Pier in Melbourne in 1914. Yesterday, it was looking slightly grim and industrial, it's metal grates down on all but one side, it's paintwork looking faded. Perhaps it was just reflecting the gray of the sky. But it still has the power to take me back to my 16-year-old  self, experiencing the glory of increasing independence without the burden of adult responsibility. Summer evenings riding the carousel with friends, before going to a movie at the Electric Shadows Cinema. So sophisticated!

And now, it also takes me back to Paris - remember? Miles and I were going to find every merry-go-round in the city. If you google 'Paris carousels', you'll be offered a number of articles, many claiming Paris is the 'City of Carousels'. One of the best articles I've read is by Susan Hack, an American writer living in Paris who has discovered many of the city's carousels in the company of her daughter, Sophie.

I don't think Miles, Jim and I found all of them but we managed to find a few. Not surprisingly, our first Parisian merry-go-round was on the edge of the Seine, in the shadow of the Tour Eiffel. It was a dazzling two-storey carousel that Miles was excited to ride and I was excited to photograph.

Our first carousel, in the shadow of the Tour Eiffel

This was the first time in both our lives that we'd seen a two-storey carousel but they are, if not commonplace, then not unusual in Paris. At Christmas, one appeared with the ice-skating rink in front of Hotel de Ville.

The Christmas carousel at Hotel de Ville

We discovered others at the foot of the stairs to Sacre Couer, near the funicular that can save you climbing all those steps. And across the Iena Bridge, opposite the Tour Eiffel's carousel, is another two-storey beauty, not far from Trocadero.

The carousel near the funicular, Montmartre 

Ponte d'Iena's carousel dressed for Christmas

Not all the carousels of Paris are elaborately decorated fantasies. Some are simpler, 'flying horse' models, where the horses hang from the roof of the merry-go-round and spin out as the ride speeds up. On some of these, children sitting on the outer rim of horses are given sticks with which they try to collect hoops, harking back to medieval jousting. This was the kind of merry-go-round we discovered in Jardins du Luxembourg and near the Peripherique behind the old and secondhand book market at Porte de Vanves.

The merry-go-round at Jardins du Luxembourg

The most fantastical carousels we discovered, however, weren't in Paris. An hour from the city, almost in a world of it's own, is Paris Disneyland, with it's Disney perfect Carousel du Lancelot. The carousel, which sits before you as you walk out of Sleeping Beauty's castle, is a Disney cartoon come to life. And if you have to queue for your ride, that's a small inconvenience.

Disney's Carousel du Lancelot

But just when we were becoming blase about merry-go-rounds and perhaps a little tired of their saccharine sweetness, Brussels offered the perfect antidote. A carousel so bizarre, so grotesque, so post-apocalyptic, it looked like it had stepped out of the pages of a Jules Verne novel or Mad Max. A Steampunk Carousel full of flying horses, cockroaches, iguanas, and flying cars. A carousel that might terrify small children but was perfect for a slightly jaded 8-year-old on the first night of the new year.

The Steampunk Carousel, Brussels, New Year's Day  2013

Serendipities

Small discoveries - online, off the page, and elsewhere

Sunflowers

I can't resist a bouquet of sunflowers. These I found on a street garden near Gorman House Markets a couple of weeks ago. If I went back today, they would probably be a bit bedraggled, screwing up their lovely open faces and getting ready to drop their seeds - that's if the cockatoos hadn't eaten them for breakfast. On the day I took the photo, the bed was full of sunflowers, the promise of a crop of pumpkins and sage.

Louis IV, the Sun King

Sunflowers always, always remind me of France's Louis IV, known to history as the 'Sun King'. He built the Palace of Versailles, some say because he hated Paris, he didn't feel safe there. This is all the excuse I need to scroll through the photos of our travels and revisit our visit to Versailles. Here are the palace gates - looking very golden even on a gray winter's day.

The gates of Versailles, December 2012

You can find out all sorts of things about the Palace of Versailles here. But here is my traveller's tip: don't just visit for the day. The palace is incredible (and really needs more than a day to fully explore the grounds) but the town that has grown up around the palace is worth some time of it's own. With more time, you could, for example, visit the King's Kitchen Garden or the Antique Dealers' District.

The Dangers of Literary Lectures

Have you heard what Hilary Mantel said about the Duchess of Cambridge? Well, Twitter lead me to this terrific essay on the dangers of literary lectures and being reported out of context, which has been published in The New Yorker. Even if you're not interested in all the bookish examples, scroll to the end to read Mantel's comparison of the Royal family to pandas - it tells you a lot about the context in which her comments were originally delivered and it may make you smile.

Famous Resolutions

The fabulous Brain Pickings continues to bring me serendipitous moments of joy. I haven't made any new year's resolutions yet - the year is still young. But if you've ever wondered about the resolutions Marilyn Monroe and Jonathan Swift made, take a peak here. My favourites today come from Woody Guthrie:

Stay glad ... Dream good ... Dance better.

Top of the World

Before we returned to the everyday world of work, school and home, we attended a family wedding at Mount Buffalo. It was a hair-raising drive up the mountain and once we reached 'the spot', Lake Catani, we were CAMPING. For only the second time in my life, I was sleeping in a tent. Fortunately, our campsite had access to toilets and hot showers and even a laundry. Hardly camping at all.

Home sweet home - our tent

Now, those who know me know that I am not a camper. I'm not even a caravaner. So I was a little concerned about how I would go sleeping on an airbed in a national park. The beauty of the location, the company and the reason for being there all made it worthwhile. When I looked up at the sky through the eucalypts, it did feel like we were on top of the world.

The path to our campsite

Mount Buffalo is 200 kilometres north of Melbourne, not far from historic Beechworth. The little town of Bright is nestled in its shadow. The mountain is part of one of Australia's oldest national parks. According to Wikipedia, explorers Hume and Hovell named the mountain in 1824 and the national park was created in 1898. The chalet opened in 1910 (it's currently closed). I don't know how anyone got up the mountain to the chalet one hundred years ago - it's difficult enough today driving up the narrow windy road, trying not to look down the sheer drops into the gorge, and the road is closed during the winter.

The views, though, are incredible. I was too chicken to contemplate going to the Horn at the top of the mountain but here is the view from the lookout where the wedding took place (I've discovered that taking photos is a pretty good way of managing my vertigo - it almost worked for me on the Eiffel Tower and it almost worked again standing at the lookout).

The wedding breakfast (try explaining why an evening meal at a wedding is called a 'breakfast') was held back at camp, on the edge of Lake Catani, where we had swum and paddled along with the ducks the day before.

The jetty at Lake Catani

The family consensus was that we would camp again, even without the excuse of a lovely wedding to attend. So I've made a list of tips to help make the experience even better next time.

Tips for Novice Campers (Us)

• Take good torches. The little torch you read by at 3am in the morning isn't the torch you need to get you to the toilet block in the middle of the night.
• Test everything before you go. Put up the tent (check), make sure the gas bottle has gas in it (check) and that the gas bottle connects to the stove (check) and that the tube that connects them isn't blocked (oops!), test the air pump fits into your mattress (oops again!).
• Camp with a large group of people who can help you if you forget to do the above.
• Over cater. It's amazing how many snacks small people need when they are running around in the bush all day.
• Give up trying to be clean - but enjoy the hot showers anyway.
• Always take a lovely bottle of wine and a big block (or three) of chocolate with you.

In Virginia's and Leonard's Garden

I was looking for an excuse to share one of the highlights of our trip - a visit to Monk's House, the home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf. The anniversary of Virginia's birth on 25 January seems to me to be the perfect opportunity.

I came to a love of the writing of Virginia Woolf slowly. When I read To the Lighthouse at university, I wasn't sure if I loved it or even if I liked it. In fact, I remember telling my tutor that I 'hated' it - but that may have been an exaggeration to generate some discussion. Our tutes were always slow to get off the ground.

Then, about 22 years ago, I discovered Virginia's diaries in Belconnen Library. Hardback first editions, never borrowed by anyone. (To my knowledge, only I and one other person every borrowed them. They aren't available any more.) I was hooked. Since then, I have read the diaries, the biographies, some of the letters and essays and novels. In fact, To the Lighthouse has become one of the books I am likely to read every year or two. Single volumes of the diaries have been packed in my hospital bags and, to celebrate the end of my chemotherapy, I bought myself a first edition set of the diaries. Hardback. Beautiful. There is still a huge volume of work I haven't read but I will, there's time.

Visiting Monk's House in Rodmell in East Sussex has been something I've long wanted to do. On this most recent trip, Jim and Miles humoured me and we spent about three hours wandering in the garden and looking at the little house. It is a little house. When Virginia first saw it, she commented on how tiny it was. There was no toilet,  no bathroom. There were many reasons why she and Leonard shouldn't buy it, not least of which was that they had already bought another house in nearby Lewes.

But all her objections were nothing when she looked at the garden. The garden is still the most glorious part of the property. It falls into four sections - the walled area behind the house, the orchard that leads to Virginia's writing lodge, a large lawn that looks across to the chalk cliffs of the downs, and the kitchen garden. Today, the garden is looked after by a team of volunteers - they do a magnificent job.

The path through the formal walled garden to the house.

Looking through the orchard to the writing lodge.

A wintry vege patch and the neighbouring church.

The east lawn - you can see chalk cliffs in the distance.

The National Trust manages the property and now you can even rent rooms for a few days (and don't think that hasn't gone on my 'to do' list). They have thoughtfully left tennis racquets and lawn bowls in old tin boxes for visitors to use. Miles and I played tennis and bowls on east lawn, just like Virginia and Leonard once did. There's a small shop in what was once Leonard's garage and, before that, was the village forge. And apples from the orchard are still harvested and are contributed to the village's apple festival.

Visiting Monk's House offered a glimpse into another world - a writer's world but also a world that has long past. It's a miracle, really, that the gardens were preserved and that the land wasn't divided up and parcelled off. It's a miracle that we could explore the garden, walk through the rooms and enjoy the magic of the landscape. Just like it's a miracle that we still have some many of Virginia's wonderful words. In this little corner of England, time has stood still.

PS I have updated my blog list with some of the interesting blogs and sites I've discovered while we've been away. If you would like to read Virginia Woolf's thoughts on diaries, follow the link to Brain Pickings to read a terrific post.

Brussels is not Paris

I know.  I'm stating the bleedin' obvious. But when we arrived in Brussels over a week ago, Miles and I rivalled each other for the prize of 'most ignorant about Brussels'. At least I was clear that Brussels was not in France!

Europa and the Euro, European Parliament, Brussels

Brussels, it seems to me, suffers from Canberra's fate. As home of the European Parliament, it has been constantly in the news while we have been travelling. Just as 'Canberra' is media-shorthand for the Federal Parliament, the word 'Brussels' is journalese for 'European Union' and much has been made in the press of the perceived failures of the EU and the Euro. There has also been ongoing debate about whether the United Kingdom will withdraw from the EU altogether. And with the EU dominating the headlines, and Gerard Depardieu threatening to leave France for Belgium, there seems little chance for Brussels to sell it's more interesting side to the world.

But let's be clear - Brussels is not Paris. And here are my reasons why.

Brussels has footpaths you can actually walk on. In Paris, once you leave the main boulevards and avenues, the sidewalks shrink to scrawny, narrow paths that barely accommodate two people, let alone two people, a couple of umbrellas, a rubbish bin and some bollards. In Brussels, the footpaths are broad, although beware the pavements and cobblestones. And in Brussels, cars stop for pedestrians. In Paris, cars didn't stop for pedestrians unless they were forced too.

Brussels has no boulangeries. Okay, I'm exaggerating. There were three at Merode but that was at least a 20 minute walk from our apartment and their quality wasn't great. We were used to nipping out to the bakery across the road or down the street and being back in a jiffy. In our area of Brussels, there were chemists, hairdressers and florists aplenty but boulangeries? No. Can't complain, though. Even the chocolate you buy in the supermarket is Belgian and delicious.

Brussels is multi-lingual. In Paris, everything is in French with very few concessions made to the city's vast population of tourists. Brussels is officially bi-lingual with all signage appearing in Dutch and French and often in English as well.

Tintin welcomes the tourist, Brussels-Midi train station

Paris has the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, the Pompidou. Brussels has ... comic art. This was really why we came to Brussels, so we could immerse ourselves in the world of Tintin but we discovered Brussels has a great tradition of comic artists that it reveres. Comic artists are celebrated in the museums (visits to Musee Herge, the Museum of Original Figurines and the Belgian Comic Strip Centre are a must) and on the streets.

A giant Smurf near the Museum of Original Figurines, Brussels

Finally, Paris has the Eiffel Tower but Brussels has Mini-Europe. See, if you visit Brussels, you don't actually need to go anywhere else!

The Champs Elysee at Mini-Europe

The New Neighbourhood

Twelve days ago (I can't believe it!) we moved from the Left Bank to the Right Bank and into our new second-floor apartment wedged on the corner of a cobbled street on the northern edge of the Marais. We have a corner apartment - you can see it's windows at the top of the pic below.

The building is so old, it is moving - probably trying to fall down. Each year the windows have to be rehung to accommodate the slight shift in the building's walls. The floor slopes too - from the outer wall to the rock inner wall, which was most likely an outer wall at some stage in it's life.

The Marais has had a mixed history. It was originally marshland that became market gardens. The nobility moved in once Henri IV created what is now called Place des Vosges. The Knights Templar had their enclave a block away from us and, in the other direction, alchemist Nicolas Flamel had his house, conveniently on the edge of the cemetery, which was thought to have magical properties. For much of its life, though, the Marais has been home to migrant communities, including Paris' Jewish community.

We live in 'Bags' Ville', which happens to be the name of one of the shops on the street. Most of the street below us is filled with handbag wholesalers (no retail). It's a narrow one-way street, often blocked by delivery trucks who just stop and unload because there is nowhere for them to park. This is the view of Bags' Ville from our window.

The Marais is full of narrow streets like this. And full of wholesalers. A short walk takes you past jewellery wholesalers and Paris souvenir wholesalers too. You can buy shop fittings and display items and, at the moment, Christmas decorations in bulk. These shops seem to be run by the Asian community, so we have a street nearby full of Asian eateries - and what must be one of the last wooden buildings in Paris (Henri IV banned wooden buildings because of their tendency to burn down).

In the Marais, the past and the present collide. A few doors down the cobbled street (which is mercifully restricted to traffic other than motor scooters most of the time) is a public school. All the schools in the Marais have a plaque like this on their walls.

Eleven thousand children were deported from France by the Nazis between 1942 and 1944 - 500 of them from the 3rd arrondisement which the Marais straddles. Many buildings around the neighbourhood have plaques noting the deaths during World War 2 of the people who live in them.

The Marais is on the move. The Centre G. Pompidou and the outrageous mechanical fountain in Place Igor-Stravinsky (less than 10 minutes walk away) and the beautiful symmetry of Place des Vosges have brought tourism to the area.

So the Marais is changing. There are lots of galleries and you can be walking down a narrow street and suddenly find yourself amidst hip clothing shops, including one we found that provided clothing and other essentials for your dog and cat. And across the road from us is Hotel Jules et Jim, one of the hippest of the Marais' new boutique hotels (according to Time Out Paris) and named for Francois Truffaut's classic film. But you still have to get your designer luggage down a very narrow street to reach it.

PS I owe all my knowledge of the history of the Marais to Andrew Hussey's Paris - The Secret History, a copy of which I have unread at home. But someone very kindly left another copy in the apartment. It's riveting.

The Love Locks of Paris

There are 37 bridges crossing the Seine. I don't have plans to try to cross all of them - although we have already managed to cross a number of them many times.

My favourite this week is Pont des Arts, which I hadn't crossed until Monday when we decided to visit the Louvre. It's a pedestrian bridge linking the Institut de France (located at the top end of Rue de Seine) and the Louvre's back end. And it twinkles like a disco ball.

It twinkles because it is covered in 'love locks', padlocks locked onto the bridge in honour of the one you love. According to Wikipedia, love locks began to appear on European bridges in the early 2000s. Some months ago, I read an article about their appearance on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The Mayor of Paris would seem to have succumbed to the inevitable and, after trying to remove the locks in 2010, has let them stay. The bouquinistes (second-hand booksellers) on the banks of the Seine even sell padlocks.

The idea is that you write the name of your love on the lock, attach it to the bridge, and throw the key in the river below. Tres romantique! Miles, ever practical, wondered what happens if you stop loving the person on your lock. Well, many have got around that by using padlocks with combination locks. I suspect some people throw one key in the river and keep a spare.

Locks are now dedicated to families and are spreading up the lamp posts too.

And as we were crossing the bridge on Monday, there was more than one couple plighting their troth with yet another lock, and recording the moment on their cameras.

Ah, Paris, city of love!

Outside Our Door

This is our door - our blue door. The door is squashed between a spectacles shop (there are lots of those in the neighbourhood) and a menswear shop (lots of those too).

The three windows above our blue door belong to our apartment.

If you look out our windows, you can see the wonderful candle shop across the road, Cire Trudon. It's glorious ... but I'm a bit scared to go in. We are in a very expensive part of town and they have been making candles since the 17th century. But it's very tempting. Yesterday, they changed the windows to get ready for Christmas. But you can still see the candle rainbow in the back of the store.

If you stand on the street with your back to our door and look diagonally across the road to your right, you'll find our favourite boulangerie and patisserie in the whole of France - Gerard Mulot. The tarte citron is delicious but last night we ate 'sortileges' - a charm or spell or, in this case, a ball of chocolate-coated, chocolate mousse on a teeny tiny layer of vanilla sponge! The window display is also tres charmant!

Now, keeping your back to our door, turn your head to the left. Voila! C'est Senat - and behind that big building is the Luxembourg Gardens.

And if you walk towards the Senat, take the first street on your right, turning at the pharmacy. Voila! Saint Sulpice, whose church bells we can hear on Sunday mornings.

PS The pharmacy keeps us up-to-date with the temperature (see the green cross in the top right corner above). 10 degrees on Thursday, quite balmy. Yesterday it barely reached 7!