French health and safety!!!!

Went to the local bull 'fight' last night.

Basically, a lot of clowning around with about 10 different bulls. Some photos will give a flavour of the event which ended 2 hours later when a man dressed as a bull came into the arena with a fireworks display attached to his back.

The opening ceremony

This man leaps over the bull.

A pantomime bull takes on the real thing.

And is destroyed by it.

Local lads invited to run with the bull.

Jeux sans frontieres

But then, unbelievably, the kids in the audience were invited down to run with a smaller animal. When I say kids, I mean 6 year olds up to 14 year olds.

A 4 year old was immediately tossed into the air and the ambulance crew ran on. But things continued unabated. Then a 14 year old girl was hit for six.

The girl hit for six.

And still it went on.

The fireworks display reminded me of fireworks in the back garden when I was a child and that smell of carbide or whatever it is.

There's a man under all this.

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Currently listening to:

Having my coffee at the edge of one café forecourt and the beginning of the next. Therefore, in my left ear I've got French electronic lounge music from HotMix Radio, and in my right ear French Hip Hop.  I was about to move my seat when I realised that I was actually enjoying the combination.

Returned to Iris Murdoch's book on Sartre and the chapter, 'Picturing Consciousness'. A couple of years ago I attended some evening classes on Phenomenology - interesting but very difficult. One source of difficulty was that my own mind, my consciousness, seemed to have undergone some structural change since my teenage years or even since my twenties or thirties.

Back then, my conscious mind did indeed seem to accord with the 'magic lantern' analogy - a series of visual, auditory, sensual or emotional events appearing before my mind's eye for scrutiny.

But nowadays when I examine the contents of my consciousness, there seems to be absolutely nothing there.

So, I was relieved to read in Iris Murdoch that this is common experience. Referring to the 'magic lantern' view of consciousness, she says: "We do not in fact experience any such thing." p86. And later, "we are not able to contemplate our states of consciousness, they are not thing-like." p87.,

And yet, something is going on in my mind. Is it not?

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Last night's dinner:

Before the bull fight we dropped in at a very busy outdoor restaurant.

Sea bream, salad and rice.

Cost per head including draught cider: £19

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Currently reading:

Going between Evelyn Waugh and Rupert Everett.

Dax to Pau

Went 1st Class from Dax to Pau and back - Dax being the nearest station to Vieux Boucau and Pau being the only train available today other than for Paris.

Our special SNCF reduction cards really slash the prices of the tickets.

Dax station

Its canopy

The station buffet at Dax

While waiting for the train to leave I read some more of Paul Reed's book on Sartre: this time a section on the nature of art.

This was relevant to my understanding of Sartre's view of physical objects as always possessing an infinity of characteristics that we can never hope to apprehend - see earlier blog.

Unlike a physical object, for an artistic object, whether it be a painting, a dance, a piece of music, a novel, a poem or whatever,  the characteristics of the object are delimited by what we perceive in it. It is true that we may come to attribute to a work of art something more each time we see it or consider it, but the driving force is us, not the work of art.

"In other words," says Reed, "we never discover in it more than we ouselves put into it." p50.

Not sure I can fully articulate what this means but I think I agree with the distinction at a gut level.

Then the train left for Pau.

It had only two cars but this number of staff!!!

These French trains are pretty boring these days - the same as inter-city trains in Scotland. But at least I saw one distinctly French locomotive en route.

 And so to Pau - journey time of 55 minutes.

Canopy at Pau.

A funicular takes you from the station to the town above.

We will definitely return to Pau for a longer visit.

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Currently listening to:

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Last night's dinner:

Returned to Cote d'Argent and started once more with a Kir and then foie gras; and finished once more with a panacotta, but this time had cod for a main course.

Cost per head: £30.00

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Currently Re-reading:

My wife wanted her Kindle back so Rupert Everett was given a break and I embarked once more on the final volume of Evelyn Waugh's war trilogy, "Sword of Honour."

Norev Models

With the help of the receptionist at these holiday appartments who phoned around a few shops in the region - using an old-fashioned telephone directory to locate them - we headed for the town of Anglet some 25 miles south of here in order to pay a visit to a French model shop.

We knew that it would close for lunch at 12.30 but with 2 hours in which to accomplish a 30 mile journey we thought that would not present a problem.

To cut a long story short we arrived there at 12.29. At this point we had given up ever finding the shop and were returning home via some leafy suburbs. Nobody in Anglet had ever heard of the street, Rue Jean Mouton, or the Mall, Center Urbegi - not helped, of course, by my pronouncing it "Oorbeggy". Suddenly, out of the corner of the windscreen I spotted both the street name and the words, "Centre Urbegi". Swooped into a car park behind a concrete row of shops - hardly a mall - and rushed in.

Actually, they had hardly any train stuff, but I bought two darling  little Norev HO scale cars.

Darling little Simca

Darling little Peugeot 403

Sorry about the darlings, been reading too much Rupert Everett.

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Currently listening to:

Lux by Alex Smoke

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Landes:

I first heard of the local shepherds on stilts when we were here about 7 years ago and didn't believe that they existed or had ever existed.

Last night we saw a demonstration by the shepherds followed by a game of pelotte. Both of these events remind one of how strong the Landes cultural identity is still. In fact, it reminds one of how strong regional identity is generally in France.

I read somewhere that pelotte generates the fastest ball speed of any raquet/bat  game.

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Last night's dinner:

Prepared on limited cooking facilities

Salmon in herb sauce and rice.

Cost per head including cheap Rose wine: £8.00

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Coffee without reading matter:

Because of the palaver trying to find the model shop in Anglet, I didn't have a book with me when I had my coffee in Hossegor; that's a truly dismal experience. I must make sure that never happens again.

Coffee without reading matter.

Contingency: some progress

Last night's dinner:

Purchased some cod in almonds and tomatoes from the market and re-heated it using the pretty basic cooking facilities in the appartment here in Vieux Boucau.

The market stall

The basic cooking facilities

Served with potatoes

Finished off with a patisserie

Cost per head with wine: £13.50

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Currently listening to:

There were two open-air concerts available to see last night in Vieux Boucau - both well attended and well received and both crap. Why is French popular music so awful and yet France has produced the really excellent Daft Punk, Cassius, Air and a whole plethora of excellent electronic music as evidenced by HotMix Radio (Lounge format).

French folk rock duo.

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Contingency:

Sat myself down at the cafe with the HotMix Radio (Lounge format) playing in the background and returned to Paul Reed's book on Sartre's La Nausee.

Reed says that Sartre's argument for the contingency of things (ie the world) is that one can never fully define or circumscribe a thing as opposed to a logical or formal object like a circle. A circle can be defined using a finite number of characteristics eg radius. Once one has analysed the characteristics of a circle, there is nothing more to be said about it.

But that is not the case with things. When one is confronted with say a motor car or even something as simple as a rectangular mat on the floor, one can never exhaust its characteristics. It is always holding something back. So, one might say that the rug is red and rectangular. Then it might be pointed out that it is also woolly and threadbare. And of a certain weight and thickness. And made up of a layer of plastic backing as well as its wooly surface and that the threads of wool are of such and such a length and such and such a thickness. And then what about its smell? Eventually, one realises that one can never fully know the full list of the rug's characteristics; it will always possess some other characteristic. It has a superfluous nature to that we we can ever know about it.

Prose versus Poetry

On the way down yesterday from Lacanau to Vieux Boucau I was desperate for the toilet so called in at Arcachon Railway Station to use the facilities; there weren't any so instead took a photograph of a nicely liveried train waiting in the station.

Continuing our journey we were fairly keen to get something to eat and so drew the car up onto the pavement (everyone seems to do that here) where we had spotted a little metal square table and two small metal chairs outside a boulangerie.

In I strode and asked if they served coffee. Indeed they did said the well-coiffeured lady behind the counter. I ordered two cafe au lait and two pains aux raisins and nipped out to signal to my wife to station herself at the little outside table.

When I got back in looking for two steaming cups of cafe au lait, I was confonted with two little coffee-making kits on the counter. I must have looked shocked because, despite the queue that was now filling the shop, the lady took me over to a machine and showed me how to make the tiny expressos.

Giggling away, I took the two tiny plastic cups and the pastries outside convincing myself that I wasn't that bothered for a coffee anyway.

Two little coffees.

Astonishingly, the little coffees were amazingly good.

To speed things up, we joined a motorway and after a time stopped at a Services where for £6.50, altogether,  we had the following:

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Currently listening to:

Last year in Vieux Boucau, I found a cafe that played really unusual music. Found the same place this morning and after listening to a continuous sequence of brilliant electronic music determined to ask the waiter what was playing.

He said it was a radio station and I asked him to write down the name. Seems to be an internet station that comes in 15 different formats each playing continuous music of a specific genre. The particular format that I was listening to was Hot Mix Radio "Lounge".

The other formats included: Dance; Hits; Rock: Frenchy: 80s; 90s etc etc.


Whilst listening to Hot Mix Radio "Lounge" and drinking my cafe creme, I came across a really interesting distinction between Prose and Poetry provide by Arthur C Danto in his book on Sartre. (Interesting to an ignoramus like me, that is.)

No croissant or pain aux raisins

"When a poet expresses emotion, the words are the emotion they are not about the emotion." p 41 Prose writing, by contrast is about something, it isn't the something itself.


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Last night's dinner definitely not on a shoestring:

The Cote d'Argent in Vieux Boucau is probably my wife and my favourite restaurant - thank goodness we've got something in common in addition to finding Rupert Everett's memoirs very funny.

Kir Gascon

Foie gras

Gigot of pork in cheese sauce

Raspberry panacotta

Small cafe creme

POSTSCRIPT: The young waiter told us that if you want a small cafe creme in France you ask for a NOISETTE.

Cost per head including drinks: £30.